sounds familiar

I really enjoyed our few days in Austin with friends for Thanksgiving.

The kids had playmates again and we hardly saw them at al during the four days there. Sharaun and I went out for dinner and coffee on a double-date with our hosts, leaving all the kids home. I had two cocktails and we picked up the bill to thank them for their hospitality.

Thanksgiving dinner was all the traditional sides but with medium-rare steaks instead of turkey. I didn’t mind the lack of bird, the red meat went well with the wine and, if I’m being honest, Thanksgiving for me has always been much more about the dressing and potatoes and beans than about the bird.

Also nice was four days in a real house. Big house; Sharaun and I had our own room and I took showers every morning like the water was in infinite supply. We watched TV, sat on the porch and looked at the trees changing color, carried on grown-up conversations with other adults, and had sex without broadcasting it to everyone in the house via shocks and struts.

Yeah, it really was enjoyable.

But you know what? I’m sitting here in the RV, in a space so cozy I’m inhaling what everyone else just exhaled, setup for a few nights in a state park near Houston, taking the last sips of a Highland nightcap… and, I am so glad to be back here.

I mean, today wasn’t even easy. First day back to school for the kids after having the Thanksgiving week off. Anything but easy.

But man, maaan, it is so good to be back.

Goodnight.

All is not the thrill and joy of adventure, even when living entirely in pursuit adventure. There are not-so-good moments right along with the brilliant ones. Things like mangled, run-over mufflers and truck stop dump stations backing up and spraying you with your own waste.

The aforementioned are definite low points, to be sure. Far and away my personal lowest points thus far, however, are those times when Keaton has gotten upset and said, through tears, things like, “I hate this trip,” and, “Can’t we just go home?,” and, “I wish we never did this.”

Ouch.

Like, those hurt, man. Hurt big. Mostly because I know that, even though I believe it to be true that she’s not absolutely overcome by them, when she does express those sentiments she’s merely being honest. When things go wrong, when she’s reminded of her friends, when we have to get onto her… in those moments of stress she’s not bashful.

I still believe that, even for Keaton, the good times and happy moods outnumber the bad. I believe this not just out of hope or faith, but because I’ve observed and experienced it. Smiles and laughs and memories being made – and not just for me, I’m (relatively) certain.

I’m particularly sensitive to her feelings in this regard because her wellbeing, as a captive pre-teen on the road for a year in close quarters with family and away from friends, was #2 on my list of concerns as we considered our trip. I mulled it, chewed it, weighed and measured it, labored over it, considered it well, as did Sharaun.

Cohen, at eight, I knew, would be fine. For Keaton, though, I wondered how badly things might go with, and for, her if they indeed turned bad. Might there be real consequences to her burgeoning social life? Her intellectual or spiritual development? Could she return and struggle to reintegrate? Could she end up resenting us long-term? Broken or under-developed in some other way?

Obviously, I either convinced myself that none of these fates would befall her, or decided that I wanted the trip enough to possibly subject her to them, or that she is strong enough to best them, even if they did. Not sure which; maybe some of all three. Analysis aside, we’re out here now doing this.

And when she’s down, she’s down.

Then I’m down.

That’s today.

I skinned the knuckle of the thumb on my right hand a few days ago. Trying to get our water hose threaded onto the bib at a national park. Under the steady gaze of these fucking immense steadfast mountains – so fucking immense, in fact, that the national park takes its name from the very same.

The mountains were once a coral reef. Like the kind of thing that’s fully underwater, with the fish and the anemones and the, well, the corals. But the Earth changed. Millions of years happened and the seas retreated and the dinosaurs all died and the coral reefs became mountains. The same mountains that watched me coldly unmoving as I knicked my knuckle filling our freshwater tank.

It’s really fantastic, isn’t it? That an ocean should become a desert and underwater reefs should become mountains straining overhead instead? What a plot twist! It’s like the whole tableau was inverted!

You there! Area once filled with water and and all the beasts carried by it: you’ll now be an arid barren place without so much as a reliable drop of your former excess. Gills and fins shall give way to thorns and dust. Bet you didn’t see that coming!

Ahh… but I’ll leave clues. Little hints for the curious ones to come… bits of plant and animal frozen in stone to be read like tea leaves, to tell the story, reconstruct the histories so they’ll know.

Anyway, I like to look at the little thin scab on that knicked knuckle. I like to pretend I earned it through real, honest, hard work. That it’s accompanied by the rough hands of a real, honest laborer, not the pussy-soft hands of a pussy-soft pussy. Ah, but it is not. It is just a thin scab.

But, but maybe… maybe it could be. I mean, it was earned… it’s coming did culminate with fresh water for my family. I provided. Is it, then, so different from a scab earned hundreds of years ago by the man at the well or spring before it, gathering water to sustain his family? Is it not honestly and proudly earned, is it not to be revered?

No. A man doesn’t stop to admire his own accomplishment, that is precisely why he’s created with such a deep need for validation and appreciation! A self-confidence gap so gaping, so vast, that the true weaker sex will often chase affirmation into their own depression.

Nah… not me though, I’m sitting here beaming shitty at this little scratch, this infinitesimal badge of courage. Reveling in it, self-affirming myself by it daily. In fact I hope it never goes away and I may just get the damn thing tattooed on me when it inevitably does.

Because this thing, this this little scab, this says something. I’m doing something. I’m not sitting at a desk, writing another pussy-soft email, I’m pulling Goddamned lifeblood from the Earth in the shadows of a fucking million-year-old, sky-high coral reef.

Beat that.

The drive between the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas and New Mexico & Big Bend National Park takes you through Texas oil country. A barren seeming land, its two-lane roads filled with semis and its horizon dotted with blazing flare stacks.

Driving through it strikes me how little I know about how life goes here. The industry, the lifestyle, the people, the jargon – there’s bound to be a whole roughneck sub-culture I’m wholly ignorant to.

And that’s just one example of how this trip is showing me how little I actually do know. My little slice of the world, the industry, the lifestyle, the people, the jargon – my whole little bubble, my everything – is just a blip in the vast sea of “ways you can live and things you can do.”

It’s hard (even now, displaced from normal such as we are) to truly internalize that. Maybe because the way we’re living just becomes “it,” and anything that’s not “it” just doesn’t feel normal or right. Seeing, though, and, even better, if possible, experiencing other “its” is incredibly enlightening.

No, the current way is not the only way. Hell, standing alone as one possible way, the current way isn’t even statistically relevant when compared to the entirety of possible ways.

So take heart, me, there are plenty of other its.

Today we hiked the Smith Springs loop in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

A gorgeous easy and short hike with the amazing payoff of a freshwater spring tucked away in the folds of the Guadalupe Mountains.

The beginning of the hike is though an unmistakably desert clime: low juniper, madrone, cholla and prickly pear cacti, dry washes and tall yucca. About two-thirds through the loop, however, you find yourself walking into an alternate world: oak and pine and maple, all nearly completely hidden from view in a little spring-supported oasis and in the final few days of their Fall reds and oranges and browns.

I was really struck when we all of the sudden found ourselves in such an alien feeling environment compared to where we set out. It was beautiful and breathtaking, and I just wanted to sit and breathe it all in.

The springwater bubbling out from the rocks, Fall leaves floating atop the downstream pools, the shady canopy and water-shaped rocks. It was otherworldly, like walking into Rivendell – but in the middle of a desert.

I rock-hopped downstream, accidentally getting my toes wet but too excited to explore to mind overmuch. I took pictures from this angle and that, and sat down frequently on large rocks to see it all from as many different vantages as possible.

On the hike out Sharaun and I both agreed that you really don’t get a proper feel for, or appreciation of, a place like this until you physically get out into it, tromp through it, feel it under your feet, hands, on your face and in your lungs. When that happens, when you take the time to let it happen, you truly get the magic of a place.

A great day, great hike, and a nice green check mark next to that goal of slowing down a little.

Hugs.

24° this morning in the border town of El Paso. The RV was a champ, preserving us, keeping us warm and cozy in a little bubble parked in the back lot at a Cabela’s off I-10. Not glamorous, but certainly functional.

Stopped here to get the mail which our friends had shipped to us general delivery, but arrived Sunday completely forgetting Monday was a federal holiday so had to squat in town for another night. Spent the unplanned day catching up on errands and shopping.

After grabbing the mail we’ll make tracks onto Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where we’ll settle for a few days and also visit nearby Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Did my best to not discount the past 36hrs “stuck” in El Paso as lost time. Hard for me, tho, with my whole needing to get or be somewhere. I’ll admit I’ll feel good getting back into the wilderness later this afternoon.

That’s it, just wanted to write.

I see a balding man in a black t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. He’s in the freezer aisle. He pulls open a door and hefts a weighty box of frozen burritos. He surveys it for a moment, exhales and settles into himself a little before chucking it into his nearly empty cart.

In that ponderous moment I imagine much more being evaluating than perhaps simple cost or calorie-count of a potential purchase. No, this decision carried with it much more… maybe an evaluation of everything… of life and station and wellbeing…

“Here I am again, in Wal Mart, buying another box of mass-produced burritos because I finished the last one. Oh shit man, is this my life? Isn’t there more? Am I happy or am I just grinding? Are these burritos even good? Do I even like burritos? What the hell am I even doing?”

Because, there are so many other ways to live.

This corporate run-in-place McMansion megachurch rat-race is certainly one of them, and even an enjoyable one at times. You know… talking about your 401k, where you went on your latest vacation, pretending to know good Scotch or where to get the best steak in Manhattan. Small Group meets Wednesday, happy hour Friday and the wife’s got spin after dropping the kids off at school. Oh look my Amazon package is here!

Yesterday I met a guy who legit hops trains and wanders. He described himself as an “anarchist, free-spirit, whatever.” He had one bag, a guitar, a dog, and face tattoos of railroad tracks and a compass rose. He saw my Dead t-shirt and asked if I had any grass. I didn’t, but we still chatted on the corner where he was busking for a good 15min.

There are so many other ways to live. Fare there well, JR. Hope you found some grass and a warm place to sleep last night.