The Road Home Again

hello, stranger –

it's probably fitting that the thing i'd imagined would be the highlight of my last road trip for the season turned out to be the low light in reality.  a couple weeks ago i drove out to New Mexico to see some family that had rented a cabin in a woodsy ski town in the northeast part of the state.  it was a good chance to see loved ones, and escape the heat of the desert, even if just for a while.  but as per usual, i was hassled and harried by work and other obligations right up to the point that i left, and felt spent and like i've been worn thin and was getting on the road with nothing but fumes in the tank.

it was a beautiful drive though, and once i got past the familiar exits of Benson and the Texas Canyon, the energy of the open road ahead started to filter in, and i began to loosen my grip on the wheel and breathe a little easier.  there had been a tidal wave of tasks and worries and irritations that had poured in during the previous couple weeks, and swimming around in my head like a plague of locusts.  but the further i went the more they dissolved, and by the time i crossed the state line and turn north under the moody skies of New Mexico they were a thing of the past.

that patch of highway is one i'm familiar with, and never have a problem saying yes to a chance at logging some more miles and time drifting underneath those western skies.  but the real treat was once i got off the interstate and took the rural route, up through the valleys between the mountains.  it was lush and green, and filled with meadows in parts, which were thick with a dazzling array of colorful wildflowers along the road.  it was picturesque, and even in the little towns i drove through – half abandoned and crumbling where they stood, from what they once had been in their heyday – had a quaint charm to them that seemed to spring from an old world energy, as if they were channeling something European through them.

and it was nice to see the green of the pine trees again, and take in the cool, dry mountain air, and to get there to spend time with family.  it was a short stay – only one full day – but it was problem free and recharging for the soul.  a family that truly loves each other can put out a harmonious vibe like no other, and is a hell of a nice thing to be around for a while.  there's a groundedness that comes from situations like that, and i soaked up as much as i could in the little time that i had.

then it was time to go, and turn around again and head towards the desert once more, just like that.  but i had a private agenda that i planned for the trip back home.  a friend of mine had emailed me a link to a little spot in the middle of nowhere – just off the highway in Holbrook Arizona – where travelers go to leave items behind from a previous chapter in their lives when they are ready to flip the page and start a new one.  it seemed like the perfect place for me to make a pitstop on the way back.

and if i had done my research properly and gotten an earlier jump on the day i would have taken a different route.  instead though, i spent the bulk of the morning at a leisurely breakfast in a little country restaurant, enjoying one last meal with family before setting out.  and now that the time was limited, i decided to set course directly for my friend's house in Pinetop, where i planned to spend the night.  it was the sort of sloppy road trip decision-making that tends to have a domino effect, and leads to outcomes down the line that leaves our future selves scratching their heads and cursing our former selves for not being more on point, and dropping the ball in ways that ensure we make our worlds just that little extra bit harder.

***

to get to Pinetop coming from that direction you get off the highway in Western New Mexico and cut diagonally south and west along a one lane rural highway through patches of area that are uninhabited for a seemingly endless stretch of miles.  it runs through the El Malpais National Conservation Area  reservation, with its towering outcrops of majestic rock formations, and a more beautiful and relaxed patch of nowhere i have not seen in a very long time – maybe ever.

from there the road stretches out through vast expenses of empty lands that go on forever, but the temperature was perfect and i hardly saw another car for hours.  i listened to quiet music and just rolled along with the windows down, filled with gratitude for the peace and solitude that the road was affording me as i went.

when i finally crossed the state line back into Arizona i started paying attention to the map again, so i could find a little patch of civilization to stop and buy some beer.  i didn't want to show up at my friends house empty-handed, but the first couple towns i came into were very small and i didn't have any luck.  one gas station i pulled into had a bunch of guys hanging out outside, and when i walked inside the line for the counter wrapped around the wall of the store.  good times late on a Saturday afternoon for these fellas, i guess, but i had no interest in  waiting around to catch up on the local flavor.

i finally stopped at a supermarket a little while later, when the towns began to have stoplights and two lane roads again, and made it to my friends by dusk.  it was later than i expected to get there, and she and her friends were getting ready to go out to a show at a local bar.  i didn't have a ticket or any interest, and was happy to dog sit for her and to lounge about watching a bad movie on the couch while they went out and whooped it up.

in the morning i dallied again, drinking coffee and chatting with them on the front porch about every topic under the sun, until i realized the time and that i had a hell of a lot more driving to do to get home.  i also mistakenly thought Holbrook was only about 40 minutes away to the north or so, but by the time i got there it was over double that, and the day had already crept into early afternoon.

on top of that, i hadn’t checked where in Holbrook this place was that i was going, and it turns out it’s not there at all.  not really, anyways - it actually lies about 25 miles to the east on the highway, back in the direction i had already been the day before.  the climate up there had turned hot again, and totally inhospitable compared to the refreshing gentleness of the pine forest i was coming from.  i also hadn’t slept well or eaten anything, so whatever ease and tranquility i'd felt from the day before was being quickly erased by having to push past semi trucks in the bright, hot desert again, while going in the wrong direction.

i’d written down the exit number from Google, and had expected to be able to find it once i pulled off the freeway.  but cell service was out and there was nothing but dirt roads in any direction.  i remembered it being to the east from the map i’d looked at, so i followed a dirt road in that direction, until it curved off to the south and made the highway a distant reflection of where i’d just come from.  i finally stopped when the dirt road became the kind of terrain that only a dune buggy should be driving on, and since i don't even have four-wheel-drive i did a very careful ten point turn to back out of there and get back to somewhere that made sense.

when i got to a place with a signal again i finally found the answer to my riddle.  the google gods had the exit number wrong.  on some random blog post i read that i was three exits short of where i needed to go, and so i had to get back on the highway and travel even further east.

this time, though, it was the right stop, and even though it was a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, it was suitable for driving and i didn't have to fear my truck getting stuck, and me perishing under the hot sun from a lack of water and an abundance of stupidity.  after a short drive i spotted the place in the distance - a large, orange metal container standing alone in the middle of nowhere.  it was modified with a door and shelves inside so that people could leave their mementos behind, and i drove up the dirt road and turned off to finally park and exhale a bit.

luckily, i remembered the combination for the door, and was happy to see how many travelers had been there, and shed the remnants of their former selves behind.  but it was hot, flies were bothering me, and i only had a little trail mix in my belly since the previous night, so i was not eager to spend any more time there than necessary at this point.  i wrote a few words on a card and placed it with what i was leaving behind – what was supposed to be a proper goodbye to a particularly difficult stretch of life in my recent past.  then i snapped off a couple pics, shut the door and got the hell out of there.

it was a distinctly unceremonious and hurried end to what was supposed to be a cathartic moment, and my levels of aggravation didn't ease up even as i pulled back onto the highway.  i was feeling pretty pissed about everything at the moment - the heat, the bad directions, this weird patch of the land, out here in bum fuck Arizona.  but mostly i was irritated with myself for not having prepared better, and all the time I'd wasted as a result.  what's more is that i still had a long way to get home, and the quickest route – i would not realize until i was halfway down it - brought me through miles and miles of mountainous highway, the likes of which i promised myself i would never drive on with my old rattle box again.

by the time i pulled back into town the sun was setting.  the first place i stopped was the pub.  i was cranky and tired and my nerves were shot from a loathsome day of driving, and i needed a beer and a built-in friend.  the bartender and i talked and had some laughs, and i felt myself quietly returning to my normal self.  but I could not help but feel dispirited about how the day had gone, and it brought up a lot of searching questions about a lot more than just that.

i’d started this season of travel and writing in an effort to make the most out of my time out here in the West, but in the time that followed the whole thing had turned totally sideways.  it was a project that felt, at times, like it was more of a grind than anything else, like i was being driven by some invisible force that no one else could see, let alone care about, but that for some reason wouldn’t let me turn back or quit.   and so i've been chewing on that in the time since, questioning myself about what it's really been all about, and if it has even been worth it.

***

now i'm sitting here on my porch, on this hot Sunday afternoon – in this, my eleventh year out here and the end of my second season of actually putting pen to paper – and i’m more certain than ever that the answer is yes. absolutely.

in fact, looking back i don't know that i could've survived these past couple years without it. but i do know that i certainly wouldn't be in any position to actually thrive.  and now i can see that's been the thing i've been driving towards for so long, even before the traveling and writing and philosophy books, and the endless journeys inwards.  the blind search for that nameless, mysterious missing ingredient that's absence has for so long kept me on the outside looking int of something i could never quite full grasp or understand, but could feel was keeping the life i’d always imagined i’d wanted separated from the one i was actually living, and that had sent me adrift out here to these foreign lands to begin with.

not that there are any silver bullets or easy answers, or that there won't be challenges or hardships ahead.  but i can feel how things are different now, and how my relationship with what's to come is changed.  we’re all born into a world of infinite possibilities, but through circumstances we aren't even aware of we’re conditioned to see that world through a certain lens.  and it's easy to mistake that lens for reality, but the put ourselves in a position that it’s not the better off we are.

i told you last time that i’d drawn up a simple model that helps explain the way i see the human experience.  in short, it's three concentric circles, going from blue on the outside to red in the middle, to yellow on the inside, at the core.  the blue represents our consciousness, and logical selves – the words we say, the choices we make, the actions we take.  the red is our subconscious, our ego and emotional selves, where the hurts and the fears can be found, lurking deep beneath the surface.  and in the center is the yellow – the awareness behind our thoughts and emotions - the soul, if you will - the shining sun of our own little universe.

i like this model because it reminds me of how much that red bleeds into the blue, and how much it can obscure and shrink the yellow.  it can easily become thick and opaque, and in some tragic cases, be so dark and murky that it overruns the blue completely, and shrinks the yellow almost entirely out of existence.  ( there’s certain world leader that comes to mind as i write this, but for the time being i’ll spare you my instinct to spout off about how some people have so much dirty red shit water drowning out their souls that you can actually see it in their eyes, and how it can literally be written across their gross-ass face - literally - in bronzer.)

it's probably an over-simplistic way to look at things, i know, but it's all i need for my dashboard right now.  and since i feel like i've been flying blind for so long, it's a hell of an improvement over the operating system i’ve been going with until now.  and simple is good in a way, because anytime i can feel myself getting vexed or anxious or trying to hurry up too much like i'm trying to catch up with some invisible timeline, it helps me to pull it up in my mind and check to see just how much i'm in the red at the moment - even if in that moment i happen to be tooling around in the dirt in the middle of nowhere, looking for an orange container that doesn’t seem to exist, for reasons i don’t fully understand.

and on the flip side of this coin, when things are going well – when they're really flowing in the way you can feel in your body and not just in your mind – it’s easy to sit back and see how much that red is dissipated, and shrunk back enough to let the yellow and blue shine like they’re meant to.  and when they do they combine to make green, and i don't think it's sheer coincidence that the term “green light energy” is used to describe the circumstances when things are an alignment with the intelligence of the universe .  that’s from a YouTube video that popped up in my feed the other day.  i've been getting a lot of those lately, and either the algorithm really has been reading my mind, or they’re little shouts from the universe in moments of synchronicity, or somehow the robot gods have made it such that it’s both at the same time.  i can’t even begin to calculate about that, but what i do know is that the more i build my faith in the way the universe works, the more convinced i become that it's been knocking on the door this whole time, and i just couldn't see or hear it though all those layers of red.

of course, everyone has those layers to one degree or another.  but for those of us who were born to a world where we had to figure it all out on our own, that energy of lack and desperation and mistrust does nothing but attract and reflect those same qualities in the external world around us, and in doing so validates everything we've been secretly suspecting.  and so it becomes our reality, and a journey not of direction but of drifting begins.  the irony i could never figure out is that the more you try to force yourself off that path the more turned around you get on it.  whatever you chase only gets further way, so the only way to really step off that path and change that reality is by stripping out that red, one little piece at a time, examining it closely, and throwing out the bullshit that doesn't do anything but get in between the version of you that you’ve been convinced you were, and the one you’ve actually been beneath all that red all along.

it alls sounds kind of woo-woo, for sure, but all i can say about it right now is that between all the time logged between the road and the pen i think that my season of “windshield therapy” - despite being far from the adventure i’d imagined - has brought me to some places i've never been before, but that i needed to see.  there’s a sense of clarity and focus, and possibility in the air these days that i’m grateful for.  you are – by definition – never the same person when you left for a trip as the one who comes back.  so you might as well be intentional about it and come back as the best version possible then, and leave as much of the noise behind in the rearview.  it’s a process, of course, and not an easy one and by no means does it mean there won’t be challenges ahead.  but when you have both hands on the wheel and are dialed into the instruments on the dashboard you can steer towards the things in life that actually fulfill the  soul rather than just feed the ego - which sure makes the journey a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

so that being said, the afternoon is slipping away and I have much left to do.  it's the end of the final weekend of this road trip season for me, and i have just one more to go.  the bags are packed, the house is clean, and i’ve put out extra food for my neighbor to feed the cats. tonight i'm going to see a friend show and live a little, and then tomorrow i wrap things up before hopping in the truck and heading home.

one more blast across the country for the old rumble buggy, but this time a straight burn East until i get to the coast, and cross that bridge for home.  i think this might be my tenth time cross-country, but i've lost count at this point.  it doesn't matter though – i’ve been excited about road trips before, of course, but this one feels more significant somehow - like for the first time in a long time i don’t feel the need to hit the gas so hard or grip the wheel so tightly to know that road will take me exactly where i need to go.  and that’s a hell of a nice way to finish up a long season, and welcome a new one.

and it’s out there, just waiting like it always has, so it’s time wrap things up and get going.  i’m looking forward to being home again - it’s been such a long time.

be good, and i'll see you soon.