In school, we were taught about the migratory patterns of animals—south for the winter, north for the summer, etc. What we were not taught was that animals are not the only migratory inhabitants of Earth.

Little-known for its migratory nature, the rental car also heads for more temperate climates in the fall and spring each year in search of more frequent renters. Unlike most migratory species, though, the rental car is unable to migrate without a driver.

This is where we come in.

At the right time of the season, we can enter into a symbiotic relationship with a rental car and drive from one climate to another, at little cost to us. This gets a rental car where it wants to go, and gives us an abnormally inexpensive opportunity to fulfill our great American road trip dreams.

Two years ago, I posted an article titled, Why You Should Stop Watching TV and Be More Like Bruce Dickinson declaring my intention to stop watching television after encountering some startling statistics:

• The average US citizen spends 2.8 hours per day watching TV.
• Over an 80 year lifespan, that amounts to 9.3 years of passively staring at a screen.
• In comparison, we spend 1.6 years in school (K-12) and 10.3 years of our lives working.

Confronted with these figures, I saw a huge waste of time and an opportunity. There were much better ways to spend more than 10% of my life than passively staring at a screen. Two years ago, when I published that article, I cut all watching out of my life entirely: I stopped watching television, movies, YouTube... everything.

As someone who writes about full, vibrant living, you'd be surprised by how often I think about death. A decade ago, a mosquito bite nearly killed me, and since, the thought of death has yet to escape my head.

At first, this dark thought was maintained by the shock of how close I had ventured to life's edge. However, I began stumbling upon benefits of having the thought of death in mind. Benefits in big ways: realizing the future was more of a question mark than a guarantee, I placed more value in the present. And smaller ways: death's consideration made public speaking less intimidating. After nearly a decade of toying with the thought of death and its various surprising effects, it recently dawned on me: remembering that you are going to die is the ultimate catalyst for a better life.

I found myself frustrated and stuck in Las Cruces, New Mexico last week.

Due to our federal government shutdown, I was locked out of White Sands National Monument and driving down to Big Bend National Park wasn't any more promising. Congress appeared gridlocked. The weather was uncharacteristically cold and gusty—and when I say gusty—I mean blow the lid of your peanut butter jar away at fifty miles per hour while you're making a PB&J kind of gusty.

Cold, confined, and unsure where to head next, the realities of life lived from a vehicle seemed leveraged against me.

It took almost a month, but I have finished converting my Honda Element into a tiny home on wheels!

As someone who works seasonally and uses the majority of their year to travel, read, and write, the nomadic "van life" has always appealed to me. With no rent to pay, the ability to move home anywhere at any time, and the resulting focus of such minimalism, I intend my near future to be a rare combination of adventure and productivity.

A couple weeks ago, I finished converting my Honda Element into the world's tiniest home on wheels. As a dude who travels with little interior design experience, the conversion came out better than I could have imagined.

One of the main features that took my Element from livable to friggin' sweet are its patterned fabric blackout windows. Made with a shiny, insulating material called Reflectix, most projects using this material end up feel like the inside of a low budget spaceship. I wanted a more homey, bright look to my space that didn't feel quite so shoddy or depressing. Patterned fabric, adhesive spray, and black duct tape proved the perfect solution.

In addition to looking great on the inside, these window shades blackout virtually all outside light. They also make it impossible to see into my Element, so I can comfortably sleep, with complete privacy, anywhere I'm allowed to park.

We've been taught that the good life is found in comfort—in luxury, in relaxation, and in doing as little as possible. Those best living the American Dream have the constant experience of the highest comfort with butlers, drivers, cooks, maids, secretaries, and assistants to anticipate their every want and need. At that pinnacle of comfort, one shouldn't have to do so much as lift a finger, every desire as satiated as possible in every moment.

Is constant comfort, ease, and luxury the real pinnacle of human experience, though? The rightful aim of the western world?

I don't think so. In fact, I've increasingly come to see comfort as false gratification, as the wrong target most are unknowingly aimed at.

In the USA, comfort is our false idol.

Inspired by two books I read this spring, I started a philosophy discussion group in Silver Gate, Montana this summer.

My first encounter with the idea came from Shantaram, an incredible chronicle of an adventure in which the main character is swept up from the slums of Bombay into the city's all-powerful mafia. His first encounters with the mafia leaders occur at their monthly philosophy meetings. The second encounter came in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, where I learned of Franklin's Junto, a weekly discussion group composed of a dozen rising tradesmen and artisans in Philadelphia.

In both books, these discussion groups seemed a vital ingredient for success, communication, and organization of both character's communities. I simply thought, "Why not try to start my own?"

I released an application a couple weeks ago for a Chautauqua, a gathering with the purpose of exchanging ideas about how to live. It was meant to be a six-day experience of wilderness, introspection, and discussion hosted at the Range Rider's Lodge—a big, beautiful log cabin structure I manage in the summertime located a mere mile outside of Yellowstone National Park.

As the innkeeper of the Range Rider, I got a sweet deal to rent the entire building at the end of September. By day, I envisioned long hikes, mountain climbing, wolf watching, and exploration of some of Yellowstone's best, often overlooked areas. By night, a couple speeches and small group discussion of the things that underlie our actions in life. I envisioned us riding the high of alpine forests and breathtaking mountain vistas while we shared the whys and hows of our lives.

I was damn excited about this.

From Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, to Oscar Wilde and Ralph Waldo Emerson, great thinkers throughout history did more than read the books they picked up. Many wrote and stored the most useful, profound passages in something called a Commonplace Book—an easily review-able collection of wisdom and ideas for their personal use.

We humans forget much more than we remember. The Commonplace Book was a sort of outboard memory, a way to keep and revisit our most insightful insights. In the 18th and 19th centuries, these collections of wisdom were so popular that "commonplacing" was an actual term for the act of writing in your Commonplace Book.

Somewhere along the line, Commonplace Books retreated from popular culture, yet thankfully, never disappeared completely. A year and a half ago, I discovered and began to build my own based on the index card system of one of my favorite authors. Today, I'm 56 books in and have over one thousand index cards comprising my Commonplace Book. I recently filled up my first "shoe box" of index cards, a milestone that inspired me to finally write this article.

Leopold Huber is the founder Hippohelp—a new, totally free, map-based work trade website that can help you travel the world for a fraction of what your journey would otherwise cost. I absolutely love this site, it's navigable map feature making it the easiest work trade site to search for volunteer opportunities wherever you want to go.

Browsing the map on Hippohelp, I chanced to encounter Leopold's own farm in Guilin, China! Fascinated by this young entrepreneur turning his own soil in the Far East, I wrote and asked if he'd like to share a bit about his life and Hippohelp with readers of The Living Theory.

We all know some things are so small that we can't seem them. But what we often forget to consider is that some things are so huge we can't seem them either.

I would like to point out one of the latter to you.

This was a discovery years in the making. I encountered a piece here, a piece there, wondering for a long while what they meant in relation to each other. The first piece I picked up about three years ago reading one of my favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In all the books I read, I circle passages that I find useful or profound and write each down on a 3x5 index card after finishing the book. I have well over a thousand of these cards now. Most are useful or convey remarkable insight, but one particular card from this novel pointed to something mysterious, something I wrote down in hopes that I might one day understand:

Stop, just for a second, and ask yourself: "When's the last time I did something I had never done before?"

Really think about it... Do you have an answer?

Back in May, I went for a run in the heat of a summer afternoon in Phoenix. The sun cooked me as I coaxed myself along a six-mile route I'd run many times before, but never in such oppressive heat. Halfway through, I became woozy, increasingly unsure I could keep lifting my feet. I slowed to a walk, feeling like I might faint and immediately my face and hands were overcome with a tingling sensation of pins and needles. I staggered along for what must have been a couple minutes until the feeling subsided, then finished running the last few miles. It was the closest I had ever been to overheating. I've gone for a thousand runs, yet I'd never pushed myself that hard. I'd never experienced anything like it before.

In life, it's often your darkness that defines your light. The binds imposed on an individual's soul become the most satisfying to escape.

My dad's childhood took place in a rotating cast of apartments. Growing up he had to tread lightly, turn the volume down, and find somewhere else to play the drums out of respect for those living around him.

He dreamed of living in a house—a place where he could blast the stereo, where he could wale on his drum set, where he could live without constant filtration of his experience out of concern for others. While working full-time, he attended night school to become a mechanical designer. And after a couple years of work, he and my mom got their very own house.

They bought that house in 1989 and still live their today. He loves it.

While backpacking New Zealand earlier this year, I met a constant stream of new people. More than daily, I had those get-to-know-each-other conversations where topics of discussion circled around where you're from, what you do, how long you've been in the country, and other acquainting question and answer dialog.

These get-to-know-each-other conversations are vital in understanding another human being. However, after a few weeks, a hunger for more meaningful conversation grew within me.

I began to see this basic, everyday conversation as outer shell conversation that masked the inner shell conversation that we could be having of things deeper and more representative of who we are.

In life, we each get a few shocking, external events that shake us. Life-quaking events that cause us to stop and question, that force us examine our lives from another perspective. It might be losing a job we've long held, the death of someone close, or dancing with death ourselves, but when tragedy strikes, awareness often results.

A good analogy might be swimming across a great body of water.

We put our heads down in the water to swim. Stroke by stoke, we move along. We focus on making progress in the direction we're heading. And maybe we are making great progress in that direction! The problem is, we can't see where we're going while swimming with our heads down.

I just returned from 4.5 months in New Zealand. I added up all my expenses to find that I only spent $21 per day backpacking around both islands!

Among travelers, New Zealand is known as an expensive country, but approach it right, and it can be surprisingly affordable. Over 136 days, I spent $2,875 including flights and a week-long stopover in the Cook Islands.

In this post I'm going to lay it all out for you—what I did, why it was so cheap, and some tips for getting the best out of your own venture into "the land of the long white cloud."

With no idea of what to expect inside, each of my last steps up to the rim of the volcano allowed my line of sight a step further down into the crater. The world revealed was glacial snow surrounding the milkiest blue lake, a waterfall pouring over its edge running on through ice caves and out the eroded far side of the crater.

Assuming the crater would merely be a hole full of rocks, I stood atop, utterly stunned.

All alone and in my element, my body tensed into a slight crouch, drawing power as I took a couple rushed steps toward the edge. It was as if I were taking a half court shot with a basketball, and all this energy and wonder and excitement came out in this wild, charged, “YHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWHOOOOOOO!!!” across this mammoth scene before me.