Sunday, July 6, 2008

Dispatch Beginnings

This is the beginning of my dispatch, my stories of my travels along the frontier.

Like those who have lit out across the prairie before me, I am not totally sure what I am looking for. I just feel motion will help me find it. I think this is how I push against what I know and stretch my own landscape. I used to live in the west, in the mountains of Colorado for many years, so I am not exactly planning on being surprised by the geography, just by the life within the space.

I do hope to be surprised by myself, by what I see and hear when there is nothing else competing.

I have a love affair with explorers. Not even just the Cabeza de Vacas and Magellans-- they get all the glory. But I have a love of the quieter explorers, those who find things we didn't even know we were looking for. The explorers who somehow turn their personal missions and obsessions into something for the rest of us. And I love that even when we think we have mapped all our lands, people still explore. I'd argue it's our nature. As Americans, we explore by pushing against our boundaries. Movement is ingrained within us.

And so we drive. We look towards possibility and open range, and we move westward, pushing towards a place we can create while we leave the spaces that have created us.

Quitting only matters if there is no point. Quitting can feel like a dance, like an art form, a vessel waiting to be filled. And for the last several weeks, it has begun to taste of freedom. I'm ready to hit the road.

No comments: