Dirtbag Profiles: Jackie and Kofi

The Cutest Pair on the Outdoor Education Circuit

ABOUT JACKIE

• Type of rig: A periwinkle Honda Fit.
• The name of her car: Kofi, after Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations. The name symbolizes peacekeeping, nonviolent activism, social and political progress, and environmental justice. But don’t be mistaken; Jackie’s periwinkle Kofi is a female.
• Number of years living out of her car: Since the spring of 2008.
• Her favorite thing about her car: The back, with the seat folded down. “It’s like a studio apartment,” Jackie says. “It’s my bedroom, kitchen, studio. I can be in the most remote area, freezing cold and lonely, and all I have to do is crawl back there. I can hangout, play the guitar, write in my journal, curl up and be cozy.”
• Occupations: Raft Guide, Outdoor Educator for the Boojum Institute, Instructor for Wilderness Ventures and Outward Bound, Ski Instructor for Mammoth Mountain
• In her words, what defines a dirtbag: “A free-spirited person, with the ability to go where the wind takes them, and to be self-contained. A car isn’t required, but it helps.”
• Why she has chosen this lifestyle: “…the discovery of new places, building friendships, the affirmation of independence, discovering what I’m capable of….”
•  A saying she lives by: She who is brave is free.
  
  
  

JACKIE'S LIFESTYLE AT A GLANCE

Jackie and her boyfriend, Brandon, are sitting with me at a table at the Looney Bean, a coffee shop in Mammoth Lakes, California, where Jackie is working as a ski instructor. The theme of the morning is storytelling, about life lived out of one’s vehicle. Brandon is helping me coax stories out of Jackie, the little firecracker who lives most of the year out of her periwinkle Honda Fit.

At 5’4” Jackie is small for the average outdoor educator. So little, in fact, that she’s able to sleep comfortably in her tiny Honda Fit, simply by folding the backseat down. Like the small desert creature that she is, Jackie burrows into the depths of her car many nights of the year, to sleep among her climbing gear, books, and clothing. She usually lies down at an angle, with her feet near the rear hatch and her head in the opposing corner.

“When I pull everything out of the car it’s like a queen size bed for a dirtbag,” she says, shooting a smile across the table to her tall boyfriend.

“Jackie, tell the story about our first sleepover,” Brandon says. Jackie giggles.

“Well, I didn’t have time to prep for a visitor,” she explains. Anyone who knows Jackie understands that this means that her car was a mess: an explosion of everything she owns, covering every inch of the interior.

“It was before she even owned bins,” Brandon adds.

“I pushed everything to one side,” Jackie explains, “and we were squished together in a very tiny space, with piles of my things threatening to bury us.”

I look at Brandon. He’s six-feet-three-inches tall.

The weekend of the first sleepover, the couple awkwardly shared a site with a stranger at Hidden Valley Campground, in Joshua Tree National Park. Although they paid for half the site, the woman made it clear that she wasn’t happy about sharing her territory. That’s why they slept in Jackie’s car.

The following night, Jackie suggested that Brandon sleep somewhere else. “I told him I thought maybe we should take things slowly,” Jackie explains.

Brandon looks across the table at me. “And I told her, ‘I’m not going to leave. People will think I got kicked out of your car.’” I nod sympathetically; I was a witness.

Hidden Valley Campground filled up quickly that weekend. Friends and co-workers, including myself, occupied the sites surrounding the couple. The morning after the first sleepover, we all saw Brandon crawl out of the Honda Fit. In the end, Jackie understood Brandon’s concerns, and for the second night in a row, she let him sleep next to her, cramped in her tiny car. 

“That’s true love,” I say to my friends, still trying to picture Brandon’s gangly limbs and enormous wingspan, curled up in the Honda Fit.

Our conversation at the Looney Bean trends back to a common theme in Jackie’s life: her lack of organizational skills and homemaker qualities, both of which are legendary on the outdoor education circuit. Passing her on the highway, one might think she is just your average, adorable, strawberry blond, cruising through California’s deserts and mountains, on vacation, in her periwinkle Honda Fit. But anyone who has ever seen the inside of her little car knows that she is a dirtbag, outdoor educator, all-star slob, and down-to-earth adventurer: all the way to her core.

“I learned quickly not to leave anything in Jackie’s car,” Brandon says. “It’s like quicksand. You put it in there and it’s gone.”

Friends joke that Jackie takes her only nesting instincts out on her dashboard, which is lined with a collection of knickknacks from adventures spanning the length of the United States: Ginkgo Tree branches from back home on the east coast, sea shells from her childhood, and driftwood from her rafting adventures, all nestled in several earthy-colored scarves. She used to have pinecones from Coulter and Sugar Pines as well, but she recently threw them out. The Coulter pinecone was a hazard, stabbing her friends, and herself, at awkward moments, and the Sugar pinecone shed itself all over her car.

Looking past the dashboard, Jackie’s nest continues. An assortment of road kill (the food leftover from courses) rests on the front passenger seat, which frequently includes a large box of Goldfish, pretzel sticks, and granola bars. Spare change, water bottles, peanut butter and jelly jars, butter knives, spoons, and receipts usually cover the floor space. What the back of her car looks like is an ever-evolving question, but for the most part, it’s a guaranteed junk show as well.

“The best piece of advice anyone has given me,” Jackie says, “was when Nate [a fellow instructor at the Boojum Institute] told me I needed to get some bins.”

The story goes like this: Nate and Jackie are climbing together in Joshua Tree, when they both notice that the front tires of their cars are bald. They make appointments at the same auto shop to get their tires replaced, with Nate’s appointment in the morning, and Jackie’s that same afternoon.

The mechanic tells Nate he needs to get to the spare tire, and Nate is forced to explode all of his belongings in front of the shop. But luckily for Nate, most of his stuff is organized in bins. Sure enough, when Jackie brings her car in, the mechanic tells her the same thing. “Sorry, but that’s not going to happen,” Jackie tells him.

Momentarily, Jackie is haunted by the advice Nate gave her earlier in the week. He stood outside of her car and shook his head, saying that he felt sorry for the way she was living, and that she needed to get some bins.

Meanwhile, the mechanic tries to assure Jackie that her friend, Nate, didn’t want to dig his spare out either, but that it’s worth not having to purchase another tire. Jackie shows the mechanic the back of her car—where her entire life is piled, strewn, tossed, and flopped—and he says, looking a bit shocked: never mind, please don’t take everything out. She drives away from the auto shop later that afternoon with the resolution to follow Nate’s advice and purchase some bins.

Jackie now owns two bins, which she keeps her food and her kitchen supplies in. “It’s still not enough,” Jackie admits. Brandon and I agree with her.