Tiny Skoolie Big Heart

On a smoky morning in the Colorado mountains, as wildfires raged not far away, Patricia accepted meals through the windows of her tiny blue skoolie. She wasn’t well enough to come outside or join the community van-build going on just outside her window, even though her fledgling home was far from complete. You see, the Rocky Mountain wildfires weren’t the only ones raging that day; there were two other fires burning right inside that little school bus – the one she held in her heart and the other that flamed up in her leg.

Patricia’s wanderlust began a decade earlier. “I’ve always loved to travel,” she said, “and ever since I got in an accident in high school and found out I was almost paralyzed I knew I had to get out there and see everything. Finally, I got out on my journey.”

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There was just one problem: a tiny scrape on her foot threatened to derail her plans.

That car accident crushed her leg when she was only seventeen. It was raining, she explained, when her friend swerved to overt an accident and crashed head-on into a cement culvert. Patricia hit the dash, was thrown to the back of the car, then back up front to the windshield, over and over until the inertia stopped and her body laid still, folded up inside of what had been the glove box.

One of her legs was snapped in one place and crushed in several others. Flight for Life rushed her to the hospital where doctors were able to save the leg but not straighten it, leading to decades of additional surgeries. During one of those surgeries Patricia was stricken with MRSA, a bacterium that causes infection in the body.

Patricia suffered from the MRSA for a year and a half before it finally went dormant in her bones, where it stayed, waiting to flare-up with every new injury, just like the one she got before the van-build. She had drawn out the floor plan of her new skoolie and had just finished building out some basic components when the MRSA returned.

“All I could do was lay around for about two weeks,” she said. “I kept trying. I got my solar done, but with my leg I just couldn’t (finish).” So, after decades of fighting with the MRSA, Patricia made a decision.

Her leg was amputated above the knee, and six weeks later she was fitted with a prosthetic leg. “There were years before where I wanted to take a chain saw to myself,” she said with a smile. “Now I’m good to go!”

“I drove twelve and half hours to the doctor and told him to whack it off.”

Patricia walked out of her doctor’s office without the recommended walker or the weeks of therapy required for most new amputees. She got right back to her skoolie, and in two weeks her build-out was done.

“It’s mind over matter,” she answered, when I asked her how she was able to overcome obstacles and follow her dream. “You’ve got to be strong enough to break through all that worry and woe. I’m not a negative person. I don’t stress. I just want to live life to the fullest.”

That’s not to say Patricia’s journey has been easy. “It takes a toll some days,” she said, “and I’ll be down a day or two, but then I’ll just get back up and go. I’m not one to keep myself down. I don’t want to live just sitting on the couch watching TV! I want to be able to get out there. If I’m going to sit I might as well watch the mountains, or a stream, or a lake.”

And she does. Now she lives full-time in her skoolie traveling the country and living comfortably on $1,000 a month. To keep expenses low, she mostly boondocks on public lands before moving on about every two weeks. So far, Lake Havasu has been her favorite place, but she’s planning to see much more.

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Her skoolie is filled with color and art and a lavender tapestry that covers the ceiling. Pillows adorn a platform bed in the back and up front, her cat lounges in the warmth of the dash. Her dog waits outside, his tail wagging when he hears her voice, all three of them happily traveling together inside her tiny 20’ home on wheels.

As for her leg, she walks up and down the steps of her skoolie with ease, her prosthetic paired harmoniously with the natural leg beside it, both displayed beneath the hem of a sundress.  

Patricia has flourished as an amputee and as a nomad. “It’s very much a choice,” she said.

“Anybody can get on the road!”

To see a video tour of Patricia’s skoolie, click here.

To see Patricia’s YouTube Channel, click here.