A Days Journey

It’s 5 in the morning. I am long gone before anyone starts to wake. Packed bags in the trunk. Water bottles and snacks in a bag on the passenger floor. A sleeping Chihuahua wrapped up in a blanket on my lap. A cup of coffee still warm in the cup holder next to me. GPS says it should take about 12 hours, but I tack on an extra 3 for bathroom breaks and scenic stops. It doesn’t take long until I am out from under the invisible dome of the city and deep into the middle of where cell service sleeps. As the sun begins to break through the horizon, I think, “Freedom. Sweet, sweet freedom”.

We live out most of our lives in a box house. We drive our box car to our box job and back home to sleep on our box bed, rarely ever leaving the comforts of modern society, easily forgetting about the Earth underneath these boxes that we’ve built. Call me a wanderer. Call me a hippie. But these days, I’ve found myself falling in love with drives that take me far, far away from everything that’s man-made. Within the past 6 months I’ve driven to and from Texas, Wyoming, Arizona, and everything in between. I wasn’t sure beforehand if I would be able to do such long drives by myself, but I never questioned it either. My heart was pulled in that direction and my body followed closely behind. I could have booked plane tickets but my curiosity to see everything in between point A and point B grew to be a desire I knew I needed to feed. And I’m glad I didn’t let fear hold me back because the experiences you gain from taking the long way, are experiences you will have for a lifetime. Not all drives are worth the time you save from flying, but for the destinations I’ve gone to, there is so much I would have been robbed of had I stepped foot on an airplane.

These days we are becoming more and more connected to what is outside of us and less connected from what’s within us. It’s the apps on our phones, the shows on Netflix and the endless number of items on our Amazon wish-list that grab hold of our attention and refuse to let us go. But being out on the open road with little to no cell service, helps to disconnect me from the man-made version of reality and reconnects me back to myself and to the world outside of the city. It is its own form of meditation. To be able to zone in on the open road in front of you, unable to fall victim to life’s countless distractions. I believe there are benefits to this kind of disconnection or meditation. It’s important to be able to stop and reflect on the choices we make and the goals we dream of achieving. I believe it’s necessary to take an inventory of our thoughts and to reconcile our emotions. It’s a form of spiritual cleaning. Even if there is nothing to think of, it’s important to shut off all the chatter from the outside so that we may recharge ourselves. When you’re able to escape from everything, you come to realize what is truly important in life. And long, peaceful drives can become a vessel for exactly that.

When you choose to drive over flying, you get to witness the gradual changes of the Earth that surrounds us. I’ve driven through green hills and flat land that seem to go on forever in the distance. I’ve seen magnificent mountains that rest along the backdrop of empty space. I’ve driven down roads that guide you right up alongside massive walls of rock, a reality check of how small and insignificant we are in comparison. I’ve hugged S-shaped roads that creep up and down the sides of mountains with views of what looks like an ocean of forest trees. I’ve driven through the kind of farmland that I’ve only seen in movies. The ones with the rich green grass, the bright red barn houses, and the healthiest looking black and white cows I’ve ever seen. Such long destinations will have you driving through, what seems to be, small abandoned towns. You can’t help but wonder what happened. Some buildings have nothing left but the frame of a structure of what used to be. No sense of life. The cars that were left behind, are those that didn’t seem to have been able to make it out. A whole town forgotten about. Where did everyone go? To the cities for work? Closer to civilization where they can become something? Did they leave so they could become somebody? But what I found to be more moving than those ghost towns of faint whispers, are the parts of Arizona and Utah that take your breath away. You stumble upon such beautiful and unique rock formations that make you realize that the God that created all of this, is the same God that created all of us.

These experiences have inspired me to see life in a brand-new light. The kind of light that brings out the curiosity in me. I am inspired to use that same curiosity when interacting with those around me; to not assume who they are, but to allow them to present who they are to me. It’s easy to forget that we are living in a world much greater than us. But by spending the time to reconnect with nature, you inevitably reconnect with yourself. The world that we see around us, is the world that is found within us. We are descendants of this Earth and a fresh interaction with it, breeds a fresh interaction with ourselves.