The Wilsons

Lonni Steven Wilson

We pick up different monikers in life with which we identify. Sometimes we choose them, sometimes, they choose us.

I grew up in Michigan, moved to Arizona as a sophmore in high school, then onto California for my undergrad.

After that, I moved every year or two. In all, I’ve covered Harrison, MI; Lake Havasu, AZ; San Diego, CA; Miami, FL; Los Angeles, CA, Turlock, CA; San Franciso, CA; Santa Cruz, CA; Palo Alto, CA; Columbus, OH; Atlanta, GA; Knoxville, TN; Cleveland, TN; and Buffalo, NY

One could say that I’ve wandered all over the place… quite true.

During my travels, I’ve lived in some crazy situations. While living in LA, I used to fly to Miami, FL once a week to go to class (at the University of Miami - I was finishing my MFA). I worked for Delta at the time, so flying across country to spend the day in class and flying home (classes were once a week) was no big deal to me. I hopped a red-eye Tuesday evening at 10pm, landed in Miami at 6am Wednesday morning. Class ran from 9am to 6pm. I hopped an 8pm flight and landed back in LA at 2am on Thursday morning. It was crazy, but it was me.

One summer, I lived for 3 months in a sleeping bag under the stars. I followed that up by living for three months out of my Jeep, homeless.

Not jobless, and not school-less. Yeah, I was going to school two nights a week (Tues and Wed) from 6pm to 10pm. I don’t know how I pulled it off, working 40 hours a week, going to school full time for an M.A., and sleeping in my car. But people do what they gotta do to get by. It’s amazing how little we need in life. And make no mistake, I wasn’t at all unhappy in my situation. It was like some romantic Thoreau-esque dream. My sleeping bag and thermarest pad became a way of life. And I lived that way of life deeply, sucking all the marrow from it.

Sure, it was strange to pull into a parking lot or side street at night, park the Jeep, and climb into the back for bed. It was crazy, but it was me.

I’d been dreaming of buying a boat and living in a marina. The dream was to work during the week, then on the weekends, just head out into the big blue. Spend the weekend at sea, that back to the marina Sunday night.

It just fit the wandering lifestyle I’d grown to know.

Well, about that time I felt like I wanted to continue my education. I’d already finished a B.A. and M.F.A., and was on my way to finishing my M.A., so the Ph.D. was calling. As I looked at programs in my field my M.A. was in sport management), it became obvious that I was going to have to move somewhere landlocked for the Ph.D. That put a damper on the boat dream (but I still dream it, even today)

So instead, I bought a land boat. Yeah, an RV. Moved out of my Jeep and into it.

I lived for the next year out of that RV while working at Stanford University in their athletic department in marketing, and finishing my MA in Sport Management. As it turned out, there was a large, remote parking lot oncampus, a few blocks from my office. Stanford owned it, but it was hardly used. And I wasn’t the only one with this idea. Four other RVs were parked in it, all of us in the back row against a woodline. So during the week, I lived oncampus in the RV. And on the weekends, I could just drive away.

Wherever I was, I was all there. That became a sort of mantra for me. Life was unencumbered. I felt close to living the life that I believed one of my spiritual idols lived to the end. Rich Mullins left the world too soon, but while he was here, he, too was a vagabond.

He once lived for 9 months in a tent in his friend’s backyard. When I read that, I thought others reading it probably thought it strange, crazy. But I understood it completely. It was crazy, and it was Rich.

I put a personalized license plate on my RV. It read - WANDRER

We pick up different monikers in life with which we identify. Sometimes we choose them, sometimes, they choose us.

So I’ve moved around a bit, explored the world a little. That’s my background geographically. I loved California, spent 10 years living there, and grew to consider it home. When asked where I’m “from,” the answer is always California. When asked where I “grew up,” then I respond Michigan. I miss California quite a bit. Mainly though, I miss the ocean. Here’s one of my fave pics showing just why I miss it so much…

Oh wait, that wasn’t the pic, here we go…

The view from my undergrad
dorm room for 5 years in San Diego looked like this.

California’s also where I picked up my longboarding habit. I used to have a quiver of about 7 boards, but I’ve cut back to 2.

Leaving California, besides ushering me toward my Ph.D., also helped with one long-standing problem– singleness. Melodia and I met online (yeah, go figure, who meets the love of their life online? I thought that was reserved for 50-somethings pretending to be in their 20s).

Anyway, after 30 years, I finally found her…

Perhaps it took me so long to find her because she had “upped” her standards.

I just couldn’t resist her smile. She laughs freely.

And she’s a great smoocher! (shh, don’t tell her I wrote that)

She’s as patient as a rock. I had always prayed to Lord for a patient woman, because I knew myself well. You know all of those pre-marriage list of qualities we’re “looking for” in a spouse? Yeah, the list we secretly compare(d) every person we dated to? Yeah, the older one gets,

I think the shorter that list gets. Now, I understand the practicality of having learned about inverse proportions in high school. Anyway, my list had shrunk to two qualities: “Thinks Jesus was more than a carpenter” and “Is patient as a rock.” So…

I let her in on the financials and popped the question

In December of 2003, we married in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in America, where I had proposed to her two months earlier. We married at the Lightner Museum. Our friends and family stayed in local hotels, and we had them picked up by one of the local trolleys. The trolley took all of the wedding guests to the wedding for the ceremony, and afterward, took them on a tour of the city before arriving at the reception.

From there, a trolley took the guests back to their hotel. This allowed our 40 guests to share the experience with us in an amazing way.

I started out by saying that we pick up different monikers in life with which we identify. Sometimes we choose them, sometimes, they choose us. I have been a wanderer, but I’ve learned during that time that life is not so much about the places we go or the places we come from, but about our attitudes and efforts in the places we are in. The value of the journey is largley not in achieving the destination, it’s in making the journey; it’s in every little step. Oh, to be sure, I still want (as Paul wrote in the Bible) to finish the race I’ve started. But I want to enjoy every little step.

These have been my steps thus far. They’ve been crazy, but they’ve been me.

-Lonni Steven