The Hobo Diaries

You can idle for decades on a gorgeous island-comfy, safe, and warm-immersed like a Medieval mystic on a life-long spiritual path, and all of a sudden it feels as if you've been dumped on a water slide with a sign that reads: This life is out of your price range, sweetheart! Splash!! . . . Where ya gonna live?

In the spring of 2018, writer/reporter Holly Nadler gave up her year-round apartment on Martha's Vineyard, even as everyone cried out, "Don't do it! You'll never find another one!" And they were right! Follow her around the Vineyard with her dear old thug of a Boston terrier as she lodges in a lilac-walled cottage, which is enchanting except for the fact that it has no running water. After that come several seasons with her impossible and dementing 98-year-old mother in Palm Desert, California; a month in Edinburgh, where she's banished from a retreat on the Holy Isle; then back on the Vineyard for what she comes to think of as another Summer of Discombobulation. Is it possible to be a hobo and be happy? Well, yeah, as long as you can make people laugh as you write about it. And does it help redefine your spiritual path? Well, sure, because you're a lifelong seeker, and you'll never lose sight of the Divine . . . see it? It's just around the next bend in the road. Or the next one?