Beth and Simple Living on the West Coast

I wanted to start this blog, in part, to tell you about some of the people I’ve met on my travels. Taking pretty photos and posting them on Instagram is fun, but they don’t always tell the full story of a place. So today, I’m sharing a story about Beth, a carefree homeless woman I met in California. Whenever I’m feeling down about my life, I think of Beth. And even the memory of her sunny smile makes me remember what is important in life.

Beth – The only homeless woman I know with a cactus collection

I’ll start by telling you what I know about Beth, which admittedly isn’t a lot. 

I met Beth when my husband Charlie and I were workamping in California north of Santa Cruz. (If you’re not hip to the term, “workampers” work and live at campgrounds - a special breed of full-time travelers.) In those days, we spent most of our free time at the beach. Our go-to spot was a wide open beach on Highway 1 below some sandy cliffs near the Santa Cruz Mountains. Local surfers and beach bums alike congregated there, and everyone in the parking lot seemed to know each other. 

Beth lives in that parking lot in a vintage VW Beetle. According to locals, she’s been living there for at least a decade, probably more. And I when say that she lives in a vintage VW Beetle, I really mean it. She has totally decked out her tiny living space. She removed the front passenger seat and replaced it with a desk with a hot plate. The back seat has been converted to storage. Plus, just about every surface is covered with a lacy doily or a postcard. And during the day, she pulls out big potted cactuses that rest on the hood of the car. (I have no idea where she stores them at night!)

I affectionately call this “Beth’s Beach,” but it’s really part of Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

Beth has even figured out how to get some good rest in her Beetle. At night, the driver’s seat folds back and gets covered with a bed roll stored in the trunk. And the wraparound curtains are the cutest feature – whenever she needs some privacy, she can close vintage yellow curtains that hang from the headliner.

Most nights, she parks along Highway 1, right next to a “no parking” sign. A hand-made note in the front window lets the cops know that she’s expressing her right to park on public land due to some regulatory loophole. But when it rains, she’ll drive up into the mountains and park under a low-hanging tree. After all, judging from the rust on the Beetle’s roof, I’m not sure how rainproof it is.

A surfer comes in after a sunset swim at Beth’s beach.

Life with Beth

I saw Beth almost every day while we workamped near Santa Cruz. Charlie and I went to Beth’s beach because it was the closest spot to find a cell signal. Plus, it was just a great place to relax. If Beth wasn’t reading a book, she was laughing it up with someone in the parking lot. She was like that popular girl in high school – everyone wanted to spend time with her and listen to her laugh. My conversations with Beth were usually short. We generally stuck to sea life – how many whales we saw that day, the dead shark that washed up on the beach, or my chances of spotting another giant sea turtle. 

But more than our conversations, what struck me was her smile. She was happy. And not that fake happiness that surrounds us in American society. It had nothing to do with the size of her bank account or the newness of her stuff. She didn’t buy her happiness on Amazon. She didn’t find her self-worth through the number of likes on her Instagram page. And her happiness certainly didn’t come from a career or the material things that keep so many of us trapped in our daily life.

Life around Beth felt simple and calm and beautiful.

Life at Beth’s beach wasn’t always sunny, but it was always beautiful.

What you need to be happy

So that’s it. That’s what I know about Beth. She lives in a rusty car, reads library books, chats with drifters, watches whales, and cooks ramen on her tiny hotplate. She doesn’t have a lot of money, a cell phone, fancy nights out on the town, or a Facebook account. But she’s happy.

I never took a single photo of Beth or her little Beetle. It somehow seemed wrong. I can’t explain that, but I do think about Beth a lot. I think about how little she needed to be happy. She only needed the simplest of living spaces as long as she was surrounded by her friends who flocked to that beach parking lot every day. So why, then, do I tell myself that I need a new pair of shoes to be happy? Why do I think we need more stuff? Why do I work and toil toward some sort of career or financial end goal that is supposed to be what life is all about? Why do I put myself through that, when I could find a simpler way of life like Beth?

Truth be told, I have no idea how Beth ended up on that beach. Some days, I thought that she came to California during the Summer of Love and stayed. Or, maybe she took too much bad acid and hasn’t realized that the Summer of Love ended 50+ years ago. 

Or like so many drifters we met on the road, maybe something in her just snapped and she couldn’t do society anymore. Maybe she felt more at home in the wild, with the drifters and the sunshine and the fresh air. 

I know I did.

This photo was taken by my friend Ester the last time Charlie and I went to Beth’s beach.