Lately I've been reading On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. Having lived in Boulder for 7plus years, it's odd that I never read it before now. Boulder being the home of many an aspiring beat poet, the Naropa Institute was a sometime haunt for Alan Ginsburg; it was also the home to the Beat Bookshop, whose electricity bills I shared one summer when I rented the corner of this girls living room in a tiny apartment on the backside of said shop. I had ample opportunity, see, but somehow it was a no go.
It's also got me thinking of the road trip I took several years ago. (Sarah - it was the summer you met Lance...2000?) If so, it was the summer of the 2nd anniversary of my dad's death and I was still scrambling - trying to figure out what direction I was headed. I planned this road trip as a means to that end. I envisioned epiphanies. I got homeick. I called my mom crying from a park in Nyack, NY (once home to the great American painter Edward Hopper and my friend Erica). I'm sure I worried her and I'm sure she told me that it would be okay for me to come home. I wish I could remember what all she might have said. But I know that I stayed and that I kept driving.
I'm not a really good planner. I don't know if this is common knowledge or not, but it's true. I got to Nyack and knew nothing about the place and had no idea of where I would stay or what I would do while there. This type of traveling suited me well in Europe where I'd found my travel soulmate in Alison. Not unlike Sal and his friends in the book, we decided near daily where we would go next, visiting towns that sounded appealing, seeing none of the important sites in favor of wandering around trying to get lost. We taught cute Canadian boys how to play quarters in Salzburg; we dyed our hair in Florence (sort of - I think there was some last minute chickening out on both our parts, but I do remember each swearing we could totally tell the difference); we stayed for all of 30 minutes in Paris before hopping back on a train with a short stop in N.Spain and then on down to Southern Portugal where we spent the rest of our trip on the beach. I thought this was me as a traveler...aimless and spontaneous. I had applied this same level of planning to this road trip but the framework did not fit.
I had gone with Sarah to see a tarot card reader a few months before I'd set out on the road. She told me not to bother with the trip at all and to move out and get my own apartment. Looking back I think the advice really was, "just move on with your life. This trip is just a detour...you'll see."
I tell stories from this road trip often loaded with regret. All of the adventures I might have had, had I not been so lonely. However difficult that trip was, I now can see that it was an adventure and that it took courage to embark on a cross-country road trip alone. Sometimes it's hard to look back with clear eyes. I'm doing so now, with love and compassion to the girl I was then. However misguided and alone I might have been, I was also brave. And that is something I am proud to now see.
So there - 7 years in the making - lesson finally learned.
