Freedom (Art of the Road Trip)

To this day there are few things that I anticipate with more enthusiasm and freedom-seeking fervour than a road trip.  Of Glasser's basic human needs this F ranks high for me. I am buoyed by the prospect that is coming up in my near future, 3 weeks to Baja and back, climbing, surfing and all the other wonders that inevitably arise when there are fewer boundaries on time and movement. It is short one on the scale of road trips, and I still pine for the year of wandering with boats and boards and climbing gear that is a recurring dream of mine. But  while short, it is something, and has a different feel to other times away, other ways of getting to a destination.

In anticipation the road trip south feels different from the 10,000km flight that looms before it on the calendar in  the coming weeks. It was free for me, but flights in general, or any mode of travel where time is of the essence and efficiency is paramount feels hemmed in, constrained by structures outside of my influence. And I am tired of investing in things that are outside of my control.
Air travel is a numbers game, designed for the mass movement of people, computer-screen schedules flashing their updates in a rotating and repetitious pattern. Flight numbers are not unique, and whatever I experience on my flight to Hong Kong on flight JA17 will likely be a carbon copy of the next one and the one before that. It is travel by rote, undeviating, though there is no doubt that embarking on the plane to much needed vacation time for many has some vestige of wildness and freedom. Trace amounts.

When you fly from point A to point B there is also an urgency; time is money and money is made of time spent in many cases, in a work-life bondage. In road tripping, most often these diversions are part of the gift, an expected and celebrated aspect of moving across country the long way. In the ethos of the airport the sandals, shorts and quick-fading tans of the returnees are overshadowed by the besuited business class mover and shaker. Freedom and lightness fade quickly upon re-immersion. Both time and finances are finite, lashing us down to travel without much possibility of looseness and little hint of liberty. To afford the flight away in the first place, we most often bind ourselves to more hours and days and months spent under someone else's  control, our lives being defined by the abstractions of external economic factors. We can't afford to meander anywhere, we need insurance for a quick arrival. The finite destination is arrived at swiftly, with no funny business or side trips or distractions.  Our departures and arrivals  pre-ordained, hemmed in. 'Vacation time' is steeped in scarcity and controlled by responsibilities, shoulds and obligations. We bracket it carefully in a bed of efficiency.

The luxury of the  road trip is formed by distraction, whim, cadence, and interruption.  It is not always necessary to arrive at one destination, but it is inevitable that you reach many. Bad snack food and good snack food, opening the windows in sub-zero temperatures to stay awake through a nightlong drive. Smelling the sea air again after a long traverse of the landlocked states that it cost us to get there. Heeding the call to adventure, even for a few weeks can reopen the clogged valves of our freedom mechanisms, our basic human wanderlust, and the nomadic underpinnings of our falsely settled life are daylighted for a time.  When on the road we plan a route and a timeline perhaps only partially adhered to. Opening ourselves to diversion if it serves a purpose or even if it does not. Taking the time to stop and notice the canyon overlook, a subtle change in the landscape or some aspect of an imagined place discovered in real time. Stopping to visit, rather than flying over those friends now spread over this continent, disparate, but connected by roadway geography.  We are constantly faced with the generosity of friends, bed and floor space. In return, our visitations at times can provide interruptions to the mundane; we arrive wafting small clouds of spontaneity so that others can smell it on our breath, feel it drift off our clothes as they open the door. Points A or B while road tripping are moot, and more clearly parts of a serpentine continuum, stretching into vastness and open space.

So when I asked myself last week where to spend my time next month...far off destinations found briefly by air, or an adventure-punctuated drift south by car, the answer was clear.

Freedom (Part 1)

I have been having many dreams of late, full of imagery, perhaps messages from the ether, or from the underground of my mind. There is a lack of control, an inability to eradicate or escape some creature of deep imagination, leaking up from the floorboards of my rustic dreamland home. This is about staying put, and perhaps being bitten, or caught, or absorbed and digested by the thing that i fear most. To risk happiness, despite its transient nature.
I have pondered my own freedom of late, am learning to understand that the desires i have to twist free of the grasp of anything is grounded in entanglements of my own making. The only person to hold myself still is me. Someone I love has repeated the phrase 'you are free' enough times that I see that it is not others that hinder that feeling. I am held in the warmth of an open palm, leaving me safe but free to move if I so wish. If I would allow myself to range and be and say my own piece.  I have never been less sure of my own waywardness, and how it is formed and dissipates under tighter or looser holds. I notice that I have not written for a time and that is part of it. The fear of being exposed as the charlatan I am - an imperfect being rife with unclosed wounds and still hanging questions. Waiting for the river to wash these sharp edges down over time.