Heading West

I haven’t been blogging as much as I had hoped, but I sort of anticipated that because I have been driving… a lot. I’m feeling a lot less ‘sansauto’ than I used to be.

We took off from Lexington Kentucky on Friday afternoon at about 5pm. I’m not completely sure whose idea it was to leave at rush hour on the first day of winter vacation, but we left and the roads were busy. The drive was pretty uneventful and we made it to just outside of Nashville on Friday night. I told myself that I wasn’t going to stop until there was no snow on the side of the road and I didn’t.

The trailer worked great. We were able to sleep in it and there was sufficient battery power to keep the heater on all night. That surprised me a little, but we’ll call it a pleasant surprise.

We woke up early on Saturday morning and started driving. We drove all day. We ate in the trailer and everything worked exceptionally well.

I went to lunch with a good friend before leaving Lexington and as I told him of our adventure, he suggested that I should read some Thoreau. It just so happened that I had Walden as a book on tape (or at least an abbreviated version of it), so I listened to it.

I’m generally not one to argue with prominent authors, but I don’t know that I completely agreed with Thoreau on a few really big points. Of course I love his idea of moving to the woods, building a house with my own hands and living off the land for a couple of years (or forever), but I was still able to find that I have a substantially different view. Thoreau said that he wanted to live on his own to gain a sense of freedom and as part of his pursuit of ‘living simply and sucking the marrow out of live’ (That is paraphrased because I can’t look it up since it was an audio tape).

I’ve read that before and agreed with it. There is some beauty in living alone with your thoughts and having the opportunity to sit and think and contemplate without interruption. It’s great thought, especially if you are alone, but really the marrow of my life is found in others. It is found in my family and in the community that I long for. We live in the most industrialized country where we rely on one another for everything, yet I have met more people than I can count that are lonely and longing for deeper relationships with others.

Moving is an opportunity to start fresh with a new identity. I am going to do better and building deeper relationships with those around me.

On Saturday we drove a long ways until we ended up outside of Dallas Texas. Here are a couple of random observations from the drive.

1) Spencer snores… and if Spencer takes a 4 hour nap it really messes up his sleeping schedule

2) Arkansas has the worst maintained roads I have ever experienced

3) Arkansas has the least creative names for cities that I’ve ever heard. Texarkana was a bit weird, but I get it, it’s on the Texas Arkansas border. But what is up with Arkadelphia?

4) It is going to take a LONG time to cross Texas.

5) WiFi costs money and I’m too cheap to pay it so I have no idea when this will be posted.

We’re having a great time and moving west.