I keep comparing this time to my time on the road in 2019, and I must stop.
It’s not that. It’s not even a little bit that. The world has changed. I have changed. It’s fall, when we all start moving inward. It’s not spring. It’s not summer.
The road gives you the medicine you need now, and that medicine is likely quite different from the medicine you needed a few years ago, even a few months ago.
I knew, going into road life again, it would be medicinal, because it always is. But in my naivety, I was envisioning some soothing balm, not a bitter dose to swallow.
I forgot how this medicine works.
It’s not like you jump on the road and everything is suddenly in technicolor. The road is harsh, and it is where the deep work begins. It’s almost like a trick: you think all the shedding and stripping is complete after you let go of everything and leave your home—leave behind all those attachments to people, places, and things—but then the road cuts deeper. Starting is only starting. That was only the tangible layer of your life that was released, now moving on to all the unseen.
In the emptiness of the open road, alone with your thoughts, all those things you’d put on the back burner of your mind—because you’d rather not look at them or feel them—start bubbling up to the surface. You can’t hide from them here.
Sure, you can make phone calls, you can do the tourist stop, you can use any distraction you want, but if you want the medicine, you have to let it in and trust that it will work its magic. That means paying attention and being present for what it brings up and what it shows you. It is a deep excavation, this medicine, a cleansing, and it comes without warning. But once the purge is through, you become lighter, made of sound.
And yes, there is beauty—great beauty along the way. There are cool little mountain towns and fields of tall grass and sage, hot springs to soak in and untouched mountain lakes, but all of these things stir in you something more, and that is the thing.
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