In Chloé Zhao’s new film, Nomadland, an older woman named Fern (Frances McDormand), moves into a van after her husband dies and the gypsum plant where she worked for years shuts down. She traverses the country in her mobile home, taking seasonal jobs where she can find them. As her journey shows, the nomadic lifestyle—which many turned to after the financial crisis of 2008 and amid neoliberalism’s ongoing unsustainability—can be both fraught with hardship and so unfettered as to be sublime. Zhao, per her typical filmmaking style, opted to have all of the characters in the film, aside from McDormand and actor David Strathairn, be actual people playing themselves. The most famous of them is Bob Wells, an elderly nomad and environmentalist of over 25 years who runs a popular YouTube channel called CheapRVliving and a non-profit called Homes on Wheels Alliance to help people transition to the lifestyle. Wells resembles Jerry Garcia, or Santa during his offseason, and inspires about the same amount of reverence amongst nomads.