Based on nothing but your brief description, assuming you've not left anything important out, and that what you've included are your primary considerations, if I were you I'd consider getting a storage unit if necessary and small RV or van to live in. While gas is certainly not cheap, and certainly won't get better for a long time if ever, at least you'll have your new "home" fully paid-off and have mobility to travel your nation and work freelance gigs (and/or smuggling in rough times ahead) within your mobile man cave, including a laptop to work from, anonymously or not.

While you may not want to do writing or law, and with your environmental science and urban sensibilities, if you had any investigative curiosity, it seems to me you'd be perfect to either do some exposé journalism and/or Erin Brockovich-type stuff - though to start you might need to have some connections, leads, and ducks all lined up. There's no shortage of scandals and corruption, but not every paying publisher is willing to put their neck out. Tangentially, you could try to figure out how to make all this happen via social media, with or without others' help, whether they're established or not. This is a new age of self-reinvention.

Rather than going mobile, another not-direction could be to find some cheap property, live out of your van, and begin homesteading - and maybe document it all to make a bit extra on YouTube (it's a popular genre, including dudes building their own cabins). As you get to know that region and the people in it, you'll also be able to find ways to help them with your various skills, and they will in turn help you, as you merge into and contribute to the community.

Without saying what is important to you, what is meaningful, what gives you purpose, fulfillment, and joy - we can only speculate. Most people like helping other people - and getting paid for it.