I’m writing this mostly to fulfill a writing exercise for my writer’s group meeting tomorrow. While in the shower, I thought about my last summer roadtrip, done with family and family’s friend in tow. It was a thousands of miles road trip out west, through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Yes, we hit the Grand Canyon and a few other amazing national parks. For the past few years, when we do these trips, I usually pair them with a mixed-media project I loosely call “Point of No Return”. You can read or listen to some of those snippets on this blog. This isn’t meant to be a recitation of all those entries. One moment in particular is one that I’ll probably never forget, and that was when my teenage daughter inadvertently left me a voice message while we were hiking near sunset on a very narrow trail high up on a mountain. I was in a mood - and wanted to be by myself as the group trekked back to the car to go back to the campsite. The message was her in tears sobbing to a friend that she was pissed off at me for hanging back by myself, and what if something terrible happened to me while alone, like falling off the trail into the abyss below. Or something like that. I won’t go into the details here of why I get this way during these long sojourns. But basically, I need time alone by myself or I go a little bonkers with the forced camaraderie of group travel. Later on at another point during the trip, I drove off while the rest of the group went kayaking on the Colorado river. I ended up finding a cool cemetery and abandoned farm in the middle of the desert trail. The sound of silence, or the wind blowing, suggesting no one might find you should something bad happen to you while alone - sometimes that’s what’s needed and wanted when you don’t feel particularly needed or wanted.
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