On a 2025 trip to Africa with a student-led global-health organization, Brienz Ottman had what she calls a near-death experience. Ottman, a 25-year-old registered nurse, contracted a life-threatening illness and had to be hospitalized. During the four-hour ambulance ride, she reflected on her “purpose,” questioning whether nursing was the right path.
She decided it wasn’t – at least, for now – and is embracing a nomadic life defined by creating handmade jewelry and art (under the name Spirit of Brienz) and traveling, with her 24-year-old partner, Ryan Nickel, and a Holland lop-eared bunny, Juniper (Juni for short). Home is an Airstream trailer pulled by a retired ambulance the couple bought on a government website.
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So far, they’ve traveled a bit in Wisconsin and Minnesota and were still considering their plans for fall. Originally, they planned to do a Route 66 trip last spring (for the U.S. highway’s 100th anniversary), but they weren’t quite ready.
“This journey is a lot about pivoting and seeing where the road goes,” she says. The lead-up to their peripatetic life has been its own adventure. Ottman had tent-camped her “whole life” – but had no experience with campers. It was like buying a first car and first house at the same time. Eventually Facebook Marketplace introduced them to a 26-foot, circa-1976 Airstream skillfully restored and in their price range, but it seemed too good to be true. “I thought it was AI,” says Ottman. “Everything about it was incredible, and it was true – it was all true.”
They loved the flowered wallpaper the trailer came with and how well it works with their own style mix of pieces thrifted and passed down. Besides being a functional working and living space, the Airstream needed to feel “natural, calming and very peaceful,” says Ottman.
The wildflower – growing wild and surviving – is a recurring metaphor in Ottman’s life. “We live a very unique lifestyle,” she says, “but there’s nothing really special about what we’re doing. We chose risk and uncertainty over some of the daily comforts, so that we can live in our purpose. It’s not easy all the time, but even living a traditional lifestyle isn’t easy.”
