June 7, 2019

Road Trip Series: A Travelogue [Book edition]

Writer in Transit Presents:

Prelude

“To be an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word.”

. . . Is a phrase that’s been stuck in my ear ever since I read it in a book. It slips between a slit in my mind; it strikes a chord and it echoes. Like a whisper from a memory, or a call of the imagination, it stirs . . . it dares.

* * *

—3:19pm. The engine revs up as the gear shifts down; it’s a long road uphill. I reach the crest of the road and let the car coast down, round a turn. A flash of the sun then—emptiness. Open land spread in every direction. I let the car coast down until the road straightened and leveled out. A vast and stark scene now fills my vision: dirt and asphalt below, the cloud-streaked sky above, and a hazy blue sliver of distant mountains in the horizon. Looking out in front of me, I see the road stretch, taper, then vanish as it followed the arc of the earth. I look at my rear view mirror and not a car was in sight. I look at the fuel gauge; less than half a tank. A feeling crept up, and something sank in my gut. I couldn’t tell whether it was fear of the unknown or the thrill of infinite possibilities. There was no sign of civilization in sight and the open road stretched and stretched. It slipped off my mind that today’s drive was across Nevada. And now I’m in the middle of a desert with less than half a tank of gas; but I’ve got time.

* * *

Introduction

Wanting to explore comes natural to a child, driven by that innate curiosity we were all born with. Whatever happened with that? Like all children, I had it, and like most of us on the journey of growing up, I lost it. But now I got it back.

The possibility of traveling to and exploring new places has always thrilled me. But it wasn’t until that one day in 2015—July 4th to be precise—that I became intrigued by long term travel. It was Independence Day (in the US) and decided to do a movie marathon; Mile… Mile & a Half, Living on One Dollar , and Maidentrip were the films I decided to watch. Coincidentally, all of them were about traveling and exploring new places. After the last film was done, I got up, went out, and did a short local trail near our place. I got the bug. I wanted to explore. I became interested in other travel documentaries/shows and that’s when I came across departures, a Canadian travel show that has just the right blend of trivia, humor, and heart and awesome

cinematography, and also a book called Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, which offers practical advice on the most important aspect of long term travel: your attitude and mindset. These two—the show and the book, and the people behind them—have solidified my desire to someday explore new places, free from the structured routines of normal, everyday life.

After about two years of eagerly longing to do this kind of travel, and dreaming about which places I would like to go to, I decided I would like to test the waters of extended travel right now. Or at least as soon as my budget would allow. So I started thinking about where I could possibly go and for how long. I thought about Iceland and New Zealand, which are really the top two on my list. But I thought if I wanted to be away for a while, choosing either of those would require higher costs. I thought about doing the John Muir Trail, which takes usually around 3 weeks to do. But the planning and preparation for it seemed too much for me at the time, and I’m not sure if I want or even should do that by myself. I even thought about doing a train ride to wherever, as cliché as that sounds. But then a thought occurred to me: why not try to see for myself the place where Annie

Dillard roamed and observed and wrote about in her book, Pilgrim. Tinker Creek, in Roanoke, in Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Maybe I could go there, and stop by other places along the way. A road trip across the US. It would allow me the length of time I wanted to have without being too expensive. And I just recently bought my car too, so might as well use it.

I came up with the idea around November of 2017 and planned to do the road trip around Fall of 2018. That would allow me time to save up and plan for this trip. Fall season would also be a good time to be in the east. I had approximately 10 months to prepare. I wanted to do this and I hoped I would push through with it. 6 weeks, me and my Honda Fit, some good music, and the open road. I left for my trip on August 22, 2018, and returned on November 7, 2018. I did it. What I originally intended to be 6 weeks turned out to be almost 3 months on the road. 11 weeks of exploring, alternating nature and city, solitude and society, and structuring my days from scratch. As adventurous and fun as that sounds—and in fact it was—it wasn’t all pleasant and carefree. But it was definitely all worth it . . . and then some.

A Trail Map, A Guide

Let me offer a guide on how to read the following body of work, or better yet, an expectation to take with you along the way: nothing. Strip away all expectations of what you think this is or will be. I’d like to think of this simply as a travelogue, stating the happenings of my days, but it’s not always like that. On occasion, this will contain: absolutely nothing about what had transpired during the day, an account of the mundane, an attempt to explain certain geologic processes, a record and study of the tremors of the mind, and sometimes, I just write down the details of the scene in front of me, nothing more.

I didn’t really intend to share all of this when I started writing back in Day 1, even at the end of the trip, I thought maybe I’d just share some of the entries. But I started transcribing my entries into my laptop, I started writing, and a feeling of excitement gripped me, to maybe just share everything (almost everything). Like how a child shows his newly

finished masterpiece, crayons in hand, to his unsuspecting family—proudly, without shame, complete with a smug and a grin. And so to be utterly honest, this body of work has no direction. It is not like a book that has a proper beginning, climax and conclusion. It is nothing more than a few notes from a series of meanderings on the road and of the mind.

But you might find it interesting, and hopefully worth reading, all through the last day, in day 78. If there’s one thing I learned through all my days of hiking, besides never hiking alone through grizzly country, is that the best way to enjoy a hike is not to walk waiting and expectant of the reward at the end. Because sometimes the end is just a simple view, sometimes there’s a sea of fog blanketing the supposedly beautiful view, and sometimes at the end there is no view at all—the trail is a loop! The rewards, I found, were already there as you walk: the ever-changing scenery of nature’s beauty, fresh with every step. So read this as you would hike an unfamiliar trail. Don’t cast your mind to what might be waiting later; enjoy the walk. Whatever you find at the end is a bonus, an abundance.

*Hello, if you haven’t yet sensed, this thing you are reading is like a book – use the Contents as your home base, it’ll help you pick up where you left off!