Hitting the Road

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot

I might have gone crazy.  At least that's what some people think.  In a few weeks, I'll be setting off on the road and living in this 21' long Roadtrek camper van.   Other than two or three particular locations across the country where friends live,  I don't have much of a plan of where I'm going.  Doing this is something that has been tugging at my soul for quite a long time.  I've always been drawn to stories of adventure, exploration, and self-discovery:  the classics like Walden, Siddhartha, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Odyssey, as well as some more contemporary books like Memory of Running by Ron McLarty, Sea Change by Peter Nichols, and First You Have to Row a Little Boat by Richard Bode.    The words from those books and others have woven their way into the fabric of my being, and working like invisible sails, they have silently guided me to this spot in life.

I have to admit I'm really not much of a camper person.  I bought this van knowing absolutely nothing about how to use it.  I've never had an RV before, let alone been inside of one, and the vault of my camping experience contains not much more than knowing how to setup a tent and maybe light a fire.  But that is part of the attraction of this adventure: to take something that seems so familiar on the surface and to figure out how it really works and what I can do with it.    After all, isn't that what we are all really doing with our lives every single day? We steer through the world and eventually find ourselves going back-and-forth on the same road each day, one that is familiar, comfortable, or seemingly predictable.  Sometimes all it takes is a brief trip down a scant side road to give a different perspective, a different view, and we can be amazed at the discoveries we find.  Each day has the opportunity to be an adventure.  All it takes is a little looking.