reasons
Some dreams won't let go; sometimes they become us. For most of the last ten years, I've been defined in part by the desire to get out on the road, on my own terms, for as long as it feels right. Mostly, the need has been suppressed, forcibly forgotten by responsibility. But it's never gone away.
I'm not sure if I consider myself to be a romantic. I'm not a terribly emotional person. But there's no getting around the fact that the world won't come to you. Paupers and sultans must both see it for themselves.
I've been incredibly fortunate in the last few years to travel for work. India, in particular, readjusted my perception of life to the point where I didn't quite know how to handle my own hometown when I returned to it. The amount of space we Americans take up, and the expectations we bring, have become a part of us. (Of course.) I didn't understand that before going to the subcontinent.
I didn't mean for the first entry of my road blog to become a manifesto. Sorry about that. If you know me, you know that succinctness isn't one of my virtues.
...
When a few things (good and less-so) came together, I got behind the wheel of a pickup truck that I bought and customized to support a long road trip. Every time that I've crossed the southwest, and seen the same landscape that has inspired generations of artists—and entire cultures before Europeans showed up--I've remade a promise to return when I could surrender to that sky, to feel the walls of some anonymous valley rise around me. I'm hardly the first to fall in love with the earth there, but like I said we must all make our own pilgrimage. This blog will be the the longwinded telling of a journey that I hope will be long enough to justify it.