The father of a close friend, who is now dead, told me once that he could trace the happiest moments of his life back to a time all his possessions could fit in the back of a car and he could just drive and drive and drive. We were out for dinner at a steakhouse in Melbourne, and I still remember the glitter in his eye, looking back at something he was out of something he had become. He was one of the genuinely great people I have known in my life. He had my enormous respect. But overweight, all too wealthy, owning multiple houses and automobiles, he remains, almost cemented in death by heart attack, exactly what I think about when I think about excess.
In my head, I went back to that conversation somewhere between North Dakota and Wyoming, a few clothes in the back of the old blue Versa, and not a whole lot else. The flat farm pastures slowly got more rugged until the rocky mountains began, iced over in the winter, clouds swirling somewhere just beyond. Small unexpected towns where everyone knows everyone nursed their own breweries and coffee shops and book stores, much to my pleasure when I stopped driving and needed a place to be before starting out again. Bighorn National Forest - certainly the climax - went way up and way down in canyons and along cliffs, my thoughts trailing somewhere close behind. Let's call Casper, Wyoming the conclusion of the first half of another bit of lovely tradition, and the end of the Northern Mid-West.
Mile marker after mile marker, year after year, these excursions, however practical or impractical, have become somewhat sacred to me, a methodical importance I have trouble explaining accurately but which probably explains itself.
My attempt: being alone with nowhere in particular to be and with no specific route to get there and with no one expecting you by any specific time, it centers you. Out there weaving and wandering, there is great value in no one knowing exactly where you are or where you will be next. It is quiet space where you foster you and you come out of it being something more clear than you were before you went in, something that would fit well in the Tao Te Ching when it says:
"The wise are guided by inner needs
and are not concerned with the senses.
Therefore the wise person rejects the
without,
while embracing the within."
In my head, I went back to that conversation somewhere between North Dakota and Wyoming, a few clothes in the back of the old blue Versa, and not a whole lot else. The flat farm pastures slowly got more rugged until the rocky mountains began, iced over in the winter, clouds swirling somewhere just beyond. Small unexpected towns where everyone knows everyone nursed their own breweries and coffee shops and book stores, much to my pleasure when I stopped driving and needed a place to be before starting out again. Bighorn National Forest - certainly the climax - went way up and way down in canyons and along cliffs, my thoughts trailing somewhere close behind. Let's call Casper, Wyoming the conclusion of the first half of another bit of lovely tradition, and the end of the Northern Mid-West.
Mile marker after mile marker, year after year, these excursions, however practical or impractical, have become somewhat sacred to me, a methodical importance I have trouble explaining accurately but which probably explains itself.
My attempt: being alone with nowhere in particular to be and with no specific route to get there and with no one expecting you by any specific time, it centers you. Out there weaving and wandering, there is great value in no one knowing exactly where you are or where you will be next. It is quiet space where you foster you and you come out of it being something more clear than you were before you went in, something that would fit well in the Tao Te Ching when it says:
"The wise are guided by inner needs
and are not concerned with the senses.
Therefore the wise person rejects the
without,
while embracing the within."
