You cannot be offended if what is said about you is not true. Nor can you be feel insulted if you are confident in what you believe. Only those who are unwilling to accept the truth or uphold their beliefs without foundation will claim to be offended and react to insult.
Living on the road for eight years granted me a global perspective. I saw what was once my home from an outside point of view. I found comfort in moving from place to place and solace at each point of entry.
My outlet for creativity was almost entirely digital. On my laptop I could edit photos, produce a film, and write essays, letters, and post blog entries. But no matter how I shape, carve, cut or polish in the realm of electrons, the smell of sawdust and stain cannot emanate from ray traced wood grain. I craved expression in three dimensions, with excess glue beneath my fingernails and cuts to my skin to remind me of challenge of forming something beautiful.
I thought I sought a house to enable me to open old boxes with so many forgotten stories, a place to do laundry without coins and to prepare food without an order. But truly, it is working with wood that gives me a sense of purpose, pleasure, and home.
I have built my life in the construct of an unfolding fantasy.
I see myself as something more than I really am,
and then work to make that image a reality.
But if I project too far ahead, imagine too grand, I am overcome by anxiety.
And if I live too close to reality, I fall to depression.
Science fiction builds technical reality.
Fantasy is the foundation of our civilization.
Depression is the leading mental illness of our time.
Do civilizations collapse when they lose their vision for a better future?
In the space between I maintain my forward momentum–tumbling,
falling with arms outstretched, catching myself one leap at a time.
Too far. Not far enough. Stumble. Jump. Push forward. Pull back.
Reality check. Check-check.
There is a deep pain in seeing human lives restrained, and a
tremendous joy when those restraints are broken through education,
interaction, and the pursuit of dreams.
Mostly, I place the slide of cheese on top of the apple slice.
The soft cheese presses against the roof of my mouth while my tongue enjoys the cool, sweet flavor below.
Sometimes, I flip it over and the savory flavor is met first, the sweet crunch a moment later.
Just one slice of cheese and one slice of apple, but a completely different experience.
Then there is peanut butter, hummus, and melted baker’s chocolate, but that is another post for another time.
I rise to the news of our forests burning.
The two degrees they warned us about already surpassed.
It’s happening faster than expected, the models too slow.
It’s already too late, the ice is melting.
I don’t know how to do this, this thing called hope.
I am suffocated by the lies that go viral,
by the pain we call the news.
How am I suppose to find hope in tomorrow,
When the future is burning, everything in flames.
We have for millennia worked to reshape the world around us in order to make it more comfortable.
What if we instead reshape ourselves, to find greater comfort in the unaltered world?
It has been two years since my last road trip, a flight to Chicago, visit at Northwestern, and then more than two weeks coming back to Arizona with a massive telescope in the back of a rented van. Starting in Racine Wisconsin, I visited my grandmother in Iowa and friends in Colorado before making my way home to Arizona. Dan Heim was kind enough to receive the telescope, and later that fall work with me every weekend to refurbish and upgrade the beautiful instrument for the Mt. Meru Astronomical Observatory.
Now, I have lived out of my car for two weeks and three days, having left Cascabel, Arizona Thursday, July 30. I drove to the Alvord Desert of southeastern Oregon where the Pacific Spaceflight team attempted a manned hydrogen balloon launch. From there I enjoyed a night at the Crystal Cane hot springs, then two nights and a day in Bend where I pulled on rock and landed on a bouldering crashpad for the first time in months. A few days with Cascabel neighbors and good friends David and Pearl outside of Philomath, then to the Pacific Coast, lush forests and the splendid views along the 101.
Being on the road, the namesake of this entire collection of essays, is not what it used to be for me. For several years, from 2010 through 2018 it was my norm. I was never in one place for more than a few weeks (aside from my apartment in South Africa 2014-15), constantly packing and unpacking, hand-washing clothes, buying just enough food to fill a cooler. That routine with which I moved through world was not readily available to me at the start of this journey. I had lost the rhythm, the comfort of the day to day.
I am regaining comfort with me, away from home. Day by day, week by week I am regaining the freedom of living without attachment to so many material things. In so doing, I am once again able to reflect upon what I have learned from the road.
While COVID has restricted our movement, and made social interaction strained, nearly impossible in certain situations, overall we remain a social species, eager to engage. Smiles behind the masks of gas station attendants, well wishing issued from the far side of plexiglass at checkout counters, and campground stories yet told from across open fires.
I found focus again. Mornings spent fixing oatmeal over my Coleman stove, reading, and stirring the coals of the campfire from the night before. I sat upon my bouldering crashpad with laptop and hot tea, checking email when I had a signal. When my brain scattered, and checking email became an autonomous response to feeling alone in the world, I went for a swim or a hike. Two, sometimes three days in one place and then I’d move on. No real time frame. No sense of urgency to get home. The longer I was away, the more comfortable I felt, and the more I found balance in my days.
Cascabel to Tucson, Arizona … Las Vegas to Tonopah, Battle Mountain, and Winnemucca, Nevada … The Fields Station at the Alvord Desert to Burns, Oregon and then Bend, Corvallis, and Philomath. Down the coast for a few days of hiking on the dunes, then back inland through Eugene to Hills Creek Lake for three days and two nights on the backside of a massive reservoir. Swimming three times a day to cool off from the nearly 100F temperatures, moving my car and mobile office to remain in the shade of the pine and fir. Further along Oregon 58, South on 97 to Crater Lake for a rainy afternoon. At Klamath Falls I turned West along HW140 and enjoyed one of the most splendid sections of road in my journey, a narrow blacktop that wove its way over pine topped hills into cultivated valleys, through towns only visible in the fine print of the map. I spent one night at Hunters Hot Spring Lodge, a place whose more glamorous history is maintained only in the black and white photos on the failing walls. Whisky drinking, bikini-clad locals and friends of the manager gathered without concern for COVID at one end of the naturally heated pool while I remained at the other. I engaged in a conversation with a massage therapist whose story of managing a thousand head of cattle on horseback over a hundred thousand acres, a broken back, and healing through non-traditional means captivated me for a half hour. Her husband and son now run an alternative healing clinic out of the Lodge with intent to expand, and purchase their own land soon. Through unexpected hard times often come the most unexpected triumphs, again and again.
I continued on Oregon 140 across one of the most magical stretches of highway I have ever driven. No power lines. No towns. No trees. Just wide open vistas that would give one the belief they lived on an uninhabited planet were it not for a vehicle coming the other direction once every thirty to forty five minutes. Full circle, drove again through Winnemucca and took the interstate into the heart of Utah, then south to Moab and my land. At 8000 feet elevation, the temperature was yet too hot for comfortable work by day, and so I drove higher to a campsite in the La Sal National Forest, at roughly 9500 feet elevation. I spent a week there, heading into town every other day for ice, food, and to get on-line for a few hours. I had rediscovered the kind of efficiency that comes with being on-line for just a few hours per day, downloading email and answering only those of import immediately, the rest from my campsite into the evening, sending the next day.
For the first time in eight years I climbed on top a mountain bike and tackled The Whole Enchilada, a 32 miles ride of extraordinary challenge compounded by temperatures in the high 90s, over 100 by early afternoon.
Home through the Navajo Nation, visiting Colleen’s parents, and finally, Cascabel.
How many years will it be before I live from the road again? How will COVID affect the way we travel, explore, and interact?
Other essays in What I learned from the Road
Would the finch donning a strap-on propeller evade the claws of the hawk or eagle?
Would the tuna sporting a motorized fin and AI controlled rudder escape the stomach of a dolphin?
Would the earthworm find more fertile soil if it was able to employ ground-penetrating radar?
Does dominion over the natural world grant us a sense of superiority and control?
The hawk would be forced to shift its diet to those prey yet within its reach, as all species have had to do over time. But if the trend spread quickly, and all birds under the watchful eye of hawks, eagles, and owls were to escape most encounters relatively unharmed due to hi-tech gear acquired on low interest rate loans, the ecosystem would collapse for the uncontrolled proliferation of those that consume insects and seeds and the inevitable demise of their food source too. Only the vulture would benefit, in the short term, until a new balance was found.
Coyotes with Kevlar body armor would stand fearless against the rancher. Mountain lions with pepper spray and tasers would no longer take refuge in trees against hunting dogs. And the lowly rat would dominate the human house if its teeth were reinforced with diamond-carbide coatings, enabling concrete block, drywall panels, and wire mesh a mere time consuming annoyance.
Yet, with each improvement, with each upgrade, the rapid altering of a balance defined by millions of years declares no winner, only those who lose. When will we be OK with what we have, finding joy in the speed of our own two legs, the strength of our own two arms, and focus instead on the development of our heart and minds?
In the desert, the rain seldom arrives in a subtle manner, quietly or over the course of hours. Rather, it obliterates the sun within minutes, a bold, dark mass that hides something sinister. At the leading edge of the billowing clouds is a swirling mass of cool, moisture ladened air. A simultaneous sense of excitement and dread is carried by a deceptive, playful greeting. Soon, that same wind is breaking branches and tossing loose sheets of metal into neighboring pastures. Bold strokes of light rise from points unseen, echoed by melodramatic rumbles that awake toads for a twelve hours mating ritual.
Just before sunset, blue skies chase black past the horizon and the rivers run as though they were never without water, only a memory of dry sand a few hours earlier.
