When COVID-19 forced people to stay home, she made her home the outdoors

Staci Lanter spends her days rock climbing in Yosemite, while also finishing her senior year at USD

Celina Tebor / Editor in Chief / The USD Vista

Staci Lanter doesn’t have a shower. She doesn’t have a laundry machine. She doesn’t have running tap water. But she has her van, access to a river, and Yosemite National Park — and that’s all she needs.

Before COVID-19 struck the world, Lanter was getting ready to return to the U.S. for her senior year of college after taking a gap year from the University of San Diego and spending her spring in Peru. But once the virus hit, a two-week lockdown with strict and rigorous restrictions commenced. Two weeks turned into four months stuck in a foreign country. 

Lanter had a few options for when she finally returned to the states at the end of the summer when restrictions eased up: she could come back to Portland, where the job that was waiting for her disappeared because of the pandemic; she could move down to San Diego and live in her van; or she could move back into her parents’ house in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Once USD announced its fall semester would be online, she opted to do none of the above. Armed with a fresh perspective on life and her 1995 Astrovan, she headed down to Yosemite to rock climb. 

Today, she’s living in her van, climbing every chance she gets, and finishing her last year at USD to receive a degree in biology. 

To stay on top of her classes, Lanter drives into town from the park a couple of times a week, finds a library or sets up a mobile hotspot, and downloads everything she needs for class. It’s not the easiest way to take classes, she says, but planning everything out and getting into a routine has helped her adjust. 

In general, van life isn’t the most effortless, prettiest lifestyle. But that’s exactly why she loves it.

“It’s the most bare human necessities of surviving,” Lanter said.

And since she’s taking indigenous studies classes for school, her classroom isn’t regulated to a Zoom meeting on a 13-inch screen — it’s everything around her. And like the indigenous people who first settled in the U.S., she uses her natural resources as those who came before her did.

“I bathe in the river, I drink fresh water from the river — the water is so incredibly clean here, I don’t even have to filter it,” Lanter said. “I wash my clothes in the river. I’m just living as basically and minimally as possible, and I love that. I’m learning about solar, and trying to live plastic-less.”

Despite abundant natural resources and incredible scenery, there are days when Lanter has to spend all day studying, which aren’t her favorite. And one of the biggest disadvantages of her lifestyle is the ever-looming threat of wildfires, which have burned over 3.2 million acres of land in California this year alone. 

The uncertainty doesn’t bother Lanter enough to quit van life, however. In fact, the flexibility of the lifestyle is one of her favorite things about it.

“I just like to wake up and do what I need to do,” Lanter said. “And do what I want to do, instead of having to prepare or pack. It’s so much more efficient, timing wise, to have everything with you. And you can just have much more flexibility.”

If there’s one thing this year has taught Lanter, it’s to do the things you want to do now, because there’s no guarantee that they’ll still be there in a year, or even a week.

“See the world now, before it burns down,” Lanter said. “Take the right measures — slowing down and appreciating everything that you have that’s right in front of you. A lot of people don’t have access to this. I could not imagine being stuck inside for six months.”

If USD returns to in-person classes for spring, Lanter will make her way down to San Diego. If classes remain online, she hopes to travel a little farther south into Mexico and settle there to continue climbing and finish her last semester of college.

Right now, Lanter is setting her sights on climbing the Nose of El Capitan next, one of the most iconic rock climbing routes across the globe that was once considered impossible to climb. The idea alone terrifies her. But it excites her more.