Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road From Debt to Freedom, published in 2013, is a work of creative nonfiction by Ken Ilgunas, an author and journalist known for his efforts to support conservation, exploration, and individual freedom. Walden on Wheels is Ilgunas’s third book. His other books, including A Walk Across Suburbia (2013), The McCandless Mecca (2013), Trespassing Across America (2017), and This Land is Our Land (2018) all focus on roaming, hiking, and the contrast of urban, suburban, and rural lifestyles. Trespassing Across America won the Nebraska Center for the Book Travel Award and was an honoree for the Society of Midland Authors Annual Literary Award for Biography/Memoir.

Walden on Wheels is a memoir covering Ilgunas’s efforts to get out of debt following his undergraduate program, as well as the period during which Ilgunas lived in his 1994 Ford Econoline van while attending Duke University for his graduate program. The book seeks to combine the 19th-century transcendentalism of Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden with the contemporary settings of the US in the 21st century. Ilgunas’s journey is punctuated by themes that include Debt as a Necessary Burden, Living Authentically in a Modern World, and Contemporary Transcendentalism and the Power of Nature.

This guide uses the Kindle Amazon Publishing Edition of the text, published in 2013.

Content Warning: This work includes references to mental health struggles, suicide, implicit antigay bias, sexism, and racism.

Summary

As Ken Ilgunas exited his undergraduate program, he realized that he was suffocating under student debt. Ken attended Alfred University for one year, accumulating $20,000 in debt, and then transferred to the University at Buffalo for his remaining three years, accumulating $21,000 more. After completing his undergraduate degree in English and history, Ken borrowed an additional $5,000 to fund his trip to Alaska, where he worked in the town of Coldfoot cleaning rooms, leading tours, and hiking. Ken’s hike of Blue Cloud, a mountain in the Brooks Range, changed his life, convincing him of the value of freedom and the wilderness.

Ken’s friend Josh struggled to find work and joined Ken to work for a summer in Coldfoot, before going to Denver and getting a job convincing prospective students to go into debt. Josh was uncomfortable with the ethics of his job, but he needed the work to pay off his own $66,000 in debt. Ken, after a summer in Alaska, decided to hitchhike across the country, meeting people and discovering more about his love of freedom and roaming. When he finally reached his home in upstate New York, Ken’s parents were dismayed by his risky lifestyle. Ken noticed that his hometown was a suburban nightmare, compelling him to see more differences between the consumerist present and the naturalist past.

Next, Ken traveled to Canada, where he voyaged with Bob Wells, taking canoes along a route used by voyageurs in the 19th century to move furs and supplies between different areas. Voyaging convinced Ken that he did not need the amenities of modern life to live well, and he continued to cultivate his love and appreciation for nature. After voyaging, Ken got a job helping people rebuild after Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi. The work was hard and paid poorly, but Ken enjoyed working with his hands and spending nights in his tent. He met Sami, a young woman with a complicated past, and the two began a relationship. After the rebuilding project was complete, Ken and Sami hitchhiked up the East Coast.

Ken worried about Sami trying to hitchhike on her own, forcing him to realize how his situation was privileged, allowing him to experience poverty and adventure with reduced risk. After Sami joked about being pregnant, Ken developed a more concrete plan for his life, deciding to attend graduate school. Ken and Sami worked in Alaska for the summer, during which Ken became a park ranger and received an offer for full-time employment. However, he rejected the offer in favor of attending school, and he moved in with Josh and Josh’s girlfriend in Denver while he applied to schools. Sami went to college in California, and she and Ken broke up.

In Denver, Ken saw how worn-down Josh was by his job, and Ken worked as a package handler to pay off the remainder of his debt. Ken was accepted to a graduate program at Duke University, and he resolved to graduate without incurring further debt. He went home for the winter and felt how suburban life lures people in with comfort and social conveniences, but he also sensed how the suburbs drained his energy and made him complacent. In the spring, he purchased a 1994 Ford Econoline van, made it usable as a living space with bedding, a stove, and storage containers, and parked it in Mill Lot on Ninth Street, not far from the Duke campus.

Ken enjoyed living in his van but was plagued by paranoia about getting caught and loneliness from his inability to tell anyone about his living situation. After getting sick and killing a mouse in the van, Ken cleaned it and started getting more involved in university life. He went on a conservation trip and made friends, worked the summer in Alaska to make more money, and wrote stories and articles about living in his van. Ken managed to make it through his graduate program without going into debt and with just over $1,000 in savings. He gave a speech at his graduation encouraging people to think critically about their lives and needs, confessing that he was selling the van. After graduating, Ken returned to Alaska to be a park ranger.