Dream Jurney Day 7 and 8

When we finally put gas in the tank, my car had twenty three miles before empty. Dawn threatened to blast away the wispy small rain clouds, but the clouds had better plans. At Jenny Lake, we positioned our cameras and waited for the sun to shine on the Tetons. While we captured some great shots, we had to accept that our deadline for beelining home was here and we needed to leave. We packed our cameras up in the Prius one last time and the sun shone down where we had hoped, a rainbow faintly dancing in front of it.

One of the worst and best parts of a marathon road trip is going home. I have driven famous roads from movies and novels, walked in wagon tracks of the Oregon Trail, touched carved names in stone from victims on the Trail of Tears. I have seen mountains, rivers, canyons, valleys, and skylines that used to be completely inaccessible to humans, only enjoyed by the wandering wildlife, who I imagine sit on the edge of grand vistas, enamored with the beauty, resting in the worship of something beyond their loneliness. And then it’s time to go home. Back to places and people much more familiar to me.

I am a tourist, speeding through with my eyes wide, the mountains digesting me, the rivers baptising me, and the sky above me, watching my every move, urging me on, yes, go, see.

There was nothing but twenty eight hours of highway between me and home, with a quick stop to throw Chris out on the curb. Directly east of the Tetons is the Shoshone National Forest, an area of deep alpine forest, desert rock formations, snow covered passes, and snowmobile resorts. At one of the resorts, we stopped to get coffee at a gas station and they directed us to the inn next door where waited an urn full of free strong coffee for inn guests. We didn’t ask questions, neither did they.

We played D&D to pass the time, I DMing, and Chris, a lone adventurer destroying orcs and ogres in an ancient chapel. The hours slipped between our sentences and imagination, stopping only to eat salty “cheese wheels”, a moronic midwest invention of a cheeseburger, wrapped in cheese, battered, and deep fried. The only good thing about this place was the skull with googly eyes.

Wyoming turned to Nebraska, our eyes melting in puddles of monotony. We stopped outside of Lincoln for the night, but I barely slept.

At 1:30 the next morning, I woke up and started driving, too awake to sleep, not wanting to waste the hours. We drove all morning, finally in St. Louis at 9AM where we got “America’s favorite donuts”. As we walked to the front door, we already knew there would be a level of disappointment. People thronged. Inside, a skinny man in his late fifties, wearing a beret, played the accordion for tips. They were not America’s best donut, by a long shot, but you can bet I ate them all.

I dropped Chris off at his house, stopping long enough for his wife to give me a bunch of baby plants to give to Rachelle. Chris and I hugged and said our farewells, not knowing when the next adventure would be.

Loneliness and exhaustion hit hard. I spent the entire drive listening to youtube videos about Jungian Psychology, dream work, and active imagination, something engaging enough to keep me awake. At this point in any road trip, it all feels like a dream. Cars whiz by, landscapes blur into a Monet, and the radio drones on without you noticing.

I had been driving already for almost twelve hours when I stopped for a greasy fast food burger and fries. I asked myself what I had learned on this trip. What signs did God send my way? What messages did I receive from the landscape, the people I encountered, the humming pavement? Can this trip be boiled down to a theme?

As LCD Soundsystem put it: “…love is an astronaut. It comes back but it’s never the same.” I come home, but I’m never the same.

With time I will know the answers to these questions, what I learned, and what I will carry with me into the future, my relationship, and my creative works. No matter what, I am certain that this journey changed me. They all do. Every memory I now have builds onto the structure of Self, creates islands in my world view. Traveling makes me change, keeps me from cementing my feet into the ground somewhere and staying the same forever.

I thought about how long Chris and I have been friends. We met sometime in eighth grade when we found out we had the same birthday. There are no pictures from then, but there is one from our high school band room that is hilarious because of the grain and because of how ridiculous we were.

…and a few years later when we met in Paris and saw the whole city in one day. (Zak was there too!) There are too many good adventures and pictures to put here today, but I recognize how privileged we are to stay friends in this disconnected world. It’s easy to forget the good.

At 7PM on the dot, I made it home, kissed Rachelle, texted Chris I had made it, and fell asleep, flashes of the adventure playing on my eyelids. Changed forever.