On The Road

At around 3:30am yesterday morning we arrived back in the real world. It's funny that it never feels strange to leave real life and step into dreamland, but returning to it is always a shock. We weren't even gone that long, but somehow it feels as though we've been living on a different planet for the past year. It was certainly a planet I would like to return to.

Bonnaroo was absolutely amazing. It was exactly what I had dreamed it would be, field upon field of hundreds of thousands of free spirits doing what they please. I loved it. I loved walking down shakedown street and observing everyone. I loved standing in the concerts passing around bowls and beers with complete strangers. I loved sitting under our canopy, having long talks with our southern tent neighbors. It was wonderful. Everything about it was so freeing. For the first time in a long time, I forgot about work and family and the future. For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to live in the moment. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was really living.

I'm sure I'll have many entries about our phenomenal trip. It seems nearly impossible to condense it into one blog, so I'll spread it out a bit. I'll begin with the trip there. I've always been a fan of road trips, but for whatever reason, I hardly ever take them. I would love more than almost anything to just drive cross country for a month, stopping and starting as I pleased. It's so interesting how much culture varies from state to state. Sometimes I forget just how big and beautiful America really is. I'm always under the impression that those kinds of views and lifestyles and towering mountains only exist in foreign places. They seem exotic and thrilling, but they really are right around the bend. America is filled with natural treasures. It has so much to offer, and I feel that far too often I take my country for granted.

Driving past the rolling hills of Virginia, littered with tiny little houses and immense farms, I found myself wondering about the many roads my life could have taken. I wondered what I would be like if I had been born and raised there. Would I be the same person? Better? Worse? I am, of course, greatful for the life that I have, but I can't help thinking about the alternatives. I can't help questioning who I could be.

I watched a group of children swim in the little creek by their farm as their father tended the fields on his tractor. There was something so poignantly pleasing about the old fashioned simplicity of that scene. Part of me hungered to be there with them. I thought about the people who filled the homes we passed, wondering if they were sitting in their homes thinking about the people passing them by on the highways. As I sat longing for a simpler life, I couldn't help but picture them, standing at their windows, longing for a way out of the simplicity. I think I would be. I think I would spend day and night by my window, hoping for an escape to adventure, an escape from the life I had. Maybe we all hope for escape.

Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side. People use this expression with negative connotations, but the truth is, it's natural and perhaps necessary to feel that way. We wish to be in greener pastures because we are all longing for adventure. I don't think it's wrong to desire things you don't have. I don't think wanting more makes you greedy. If we didn't believe there was more out there than what we have, if we didn't dream and wish for things beyond ourselves, we would never grow, never evolve. If we didn't want to move forward, the world would become stagnant, the world would become stuck. I want to move.

We drove on and on, passed rivers and mountains and streams, moving forward through the world. Part of me wished that we could have just kept driving. Part of me longed to disappear out into the distant unknown. Part of me wanted to be on the road forever.