Or does that trail fade into the distance behind my eyes?
Six weeks or so and restless. This bit of Missouri is soft and beautiful, lush and green. But it is a place that is not mine or me. I am not Home. My place is farther on__somewhere__ but where?
I've wandered countless miles now lost in the haze of the past. I see ever more countless miles stretching out ahead. But why? What is it I seek?
What is it that Rovers and Drifters seek? Adventure? Serenity?
Is it just adding to a list of 'places', for the list's sake? Is it only a variation of the same disease suffered by those who toil away their lives stacking up possessions they don't need and will never use? Or is it to satiate an aching hunger inside that craves an indefinable 'something'.
He has no doubt of the existence of what he seeks because he can feel it's constant weight on his chest. Yet it is a thing he can not see but as a moving shadow in the mists of sunrise.
It is a tangible, real 'thing' that he knows, for sure and for certain... yet a thing he can not describe.
The road calls to Rovers and Drifters... but is that where what they seek is to be found? On the Road?
Or__ is their serenity found at 'Home'? Does the road that leads them home actually run deep within themselves? Is that where they got lost? Seeking a road they can never seem to find__ because it's not on a map or winding across the landscape?
A Drifters Road__ is it hidden within himself?
Has he run the roads and trails to exhaustion chasing his serenity... only to find in the end that it was carried along right there in his ruck with every wandering step he's taken.
...Following a road... but I'm pretty sure it's not been mapped.
...so back to toiling on that chicken coop while I cogitate on where I'll be heading from here...
- Brian
A broken down Ol' Cowboy goin' RV Boondocking ...
...and Yondering, to the beat of a different Biker Cowboy Drummer
5 comments:
It sounds like you have the "curse of a traveler". I can't remember where I saw this, just this past week. Nor did the person that posted it knew who the author was. Maybe this is your answer to the questions posted today.
The Curse of the Traveler
The more places you see, the more things you see that appeal to you, but no one place has them all. In fact, each place has a smaller and smaller percentage of the things you love, the more things you see. It drives you, even subconsciously, to keep looking, for a place not that’s perfect (we all know there’s no Shangri-La), but just for a place that’s “just right for you.” But the curse is that the odds of finding “just right” get smaller, not larger, the more you experience. So you keep looking even more, but it always gets worse the more you see. This is Part A of the Curse.
Part B is relationships. The more you travel, the more numerous and profoundly varied the relationships you will have. But the more people you meet, the more diffused your time is with any of them. Since all these people can’t travel with you, it becomes more and more difficult to cultivate long term relationships the more you travel. Yet you keep traveling, and keep meeting amazing people, so it feels fulfilling, but eventually, you miss them all, and many have all but forgotten who you are. And then you make up for it by staying put somewhere long enough to develop roots and cultivate stronger relationships, but these people will never know what you know or see what you’ve seen, and you will always feel a tinge of loneliness, and you will want to tell your stories just a little bit more than they will want to hear them. The reason this is part of the Curse is that it gets worse the more you travel, yet travel seems to be a cure for a while.
None of this is to suggest that one should ever reduce travel. It’s just a warning to young Travelers, to expect, as part of the price, a rich life tinged with a bit of sadness and loneliness, and angst that’s like the same nostalgia everyone feels for special parts of their past, except multiplied by a thousand.
“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts.
Glad to see you are up and about Brian, I re-did the blog and screwed up my blog list--it takes a memory jog now and then to remember what blogs were originally there--my sister who lives in Arkansas asked about you today--thus the memory jog!
You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.”
Picked this up somewhere. Don't recall just where.
Keep at it, Brian.
Cheers
Ed
The God hole. We are all created with a piece missing. It's the God hole. We stuff a lot of stuff in the God hole, but nothing really fits, or works or completes us. Not people, not things, not travel, not drugs, not careers, not the whole world. Only one thing fills the God hole and gives that sense of being okay with yourself, God and the world.
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