Joshua Nickelsen just wanted to close his eyes and get some rest after a long night.
He heard his phone buzzing, but he didn’t check it. He was getting messages all day. Instead, he slept.
Nickelsen, 34, was asleep maybe an hour and a half, and it was in that time the unthinkable happened: his camper trailer, which was stolen in Camas sometime early Wednesday morning, was found dumped on the side of Northeast 86th Street in Hazel Dell.
“I had given up hope,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see it again.
Clark County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chuck Kerr said it’s easier to find something with a more distinct look.
“As unique as (the trailer) looks, there’s a much higher likelihood we will get this back than if we’re looking for a Honda that’s silver or something like that,” he said.
Still, Nickelsen didn’t think there was any way his trailer would turn up again.
He arrived at his parents’ house in Camas around 3:15 a.m. Wednesday after a night working as a server and bartender at Kells Irish Pub in Portland, and didn’t see his 4-by-8-foot teardrop trailer, which had been parked in front of his parents’ house for the past three months. He looked everywhere he could think, but couldn’t find it. He noticed one of the back doors on his father’s truck was left open, and an empty storage container was missing.
That’s when he knew someone had stolen his trailer. It wasn’t the missing trailer itself that bothered Nickelsen, but what it represented. It was his future, his hope.
Nickelsen was gearing up for a cross-country trip, which he was scheduled to start early next week. He has no destination in mind for the trip, and no idea how long it will last.
“I tried to leave as much of it open as possible, so I could be struck by lightning,” he said. “I’m looking for something obvious, some sort of sign or something that made sense. I’m just trying to find my place.”
Nickelsen is trying to figure out the next step of his life. He said he found himself in a bad place “for a long time,” and ended up moving back in with his parents about a year ago after spending the last 15 years living in New York and Los Angeles. It was around that time that he also went through a divorce. Since moving home, he’s been working to save money and pay off debt.
“My life drastically changed,” he said. “Everybody wakes up at some point and realizes their life wasn’t what they thought it was going to be. Some, like me, spend time wallowing in that and focusing on that. Once I decided to go on this trip, my outlook changed.”
A big part of that was the trailer, which helped pull him out of a depression.
“It gave him hope,” said Tracy Nickelsen, his mother. “He was happy and hopeful about his future, hopeful about what was ahead. We hadn’t seen him be this happy since he got here. It’s not just a trailer.”
He purchased the trailer for about $2,000 and has spent the past few months customizing it for his trip with help from his father. They put in carpet, shelves, cabinets and lights. He filled the trailer with a few personal items and mementos, things like pictures of his grandmother, parents and brother.
When he reunited with the trailer around 2 p.m. Wednesday, it was mostly empty. The pictures, books and mementos were all discarded. He was told by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office that it was all thrown into a dumpster behind a K-Mart on Northeast Sandy Boulevard in Portland. He was planning on driving over to see if anything was salvageable.
“It’s nothing that would be worth anything to anyone besides me,” he said.
There didn’t appear to be much damage to the trailer itself Wednesday afternoon. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office found the trailer dumped on 86th Street thanks to a tip from someone who saw the driver leave it there. The tipster knew the trailer was missing after reading about it on The Columbian’s website.
The tipster, who asked to not be named in the paper, was driving down Northeast Highway 99 about five minutes after reading the story and saw a similar-looking trailer hooked up to an old black Ford F150 with “a bunch of junk” in the back. The tipster followed the car, saw the driver dump the trailer and called the sheriff’s office.
After calling, the tipster waited with the trailer and knew it was Nickelsen’s, thanks to a quote painted on the back of the trailer.
The quote — which wasn’t finished when the trailer was stolen — was, “This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one.” It’s a quote from “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. The book follows a shepherd boy named Santiago who sells his sheep to go on an adventure and look for treasure.
“The book is all about omens,” Nickelsen said. “It’s all about destiny and reading the signs, and understanding what God is trying to tell you you’re supposed to be doing with your life.”
At one point in the book, Santiago arrives in a new place where he doesn’t speak the language. He is robbed of everything and falls asleep in a market. Santiago says the quote to himself when he wakes up with a renewed sense of positivity.
Nickelsen started painting the quote on his trailer earlier this week, and after the camper was stolen, he said it was overwhelming when he realized how much more relevant the quote ended up being. It only strengthened the idea that going on this trip is the right move.
“Some people might see it as a sign or omen they’re not supposed to go on the trip,” he said. “I think it means even more. One thing for sure I’ve been able to accept is how much I have left and how much I appreciate the opportunity I have right now. Losing my trailer is making me appreciate my life more.”
Even before his trailer was found, Nickelsen still planned on taking the trip.
“I will be traveling. I will be leaving,” he said. “I absolutely will be seeing this country, or seeing the world. I’m going to do something. I’ve been preparing for this for too long to let anything stop me.”
