Article 3 - "WAKING TO A DIFFERENT VISION" January 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    When I woke up, I didn't know where I was.

    Instead of my bed in my room, I was in a confined space, almost like a box. On my one side I was penned in by someone who resembled my husband. On the other side, I crashed into a wall that didn't feel exactly like a wall. In the haze between slumber and caffeine-deprived waking, I was trying to figure out where I was, knowing that I wasn't where I usually found my morning coffee. But somehow, I knew that there was no reason to panic. Maybe I was too somnolent to be anything but disorientated.

    This confusion wasn't the result of some drunken bout that led me to sleep in some dive I never remember getting to. When I woke up after spending my first night on the road in my van in the mountains of Virginia, it took me a minute or two to shake off the confines of everyday life. Even though I had been on the road with my husband and dog now for nearly twenty hours, it was still reality that when I woke up yesterday, I'd been home, as well as numerous days before that. Today was not the usual morning, although it would be the first of thirty like it, creating its own routine.

    So now, here I was, just getting used to the sun seeping through the blinds with the wheel well jutting into my nose. The light was bright, not soft, which meant it was probably well past sunrise, though I was too confused to figure that out just right then. MacGyver, our canine mascot, crawled around at the foot of our sleeping area, which was right behind the two chairs in the front seat. Once I got my bearings, I wondered what time it was. There was no alarm clock staring at me insisting in block red certain numerals, demanding that I get up NOW. And it was weird how strange it felt without it. No clocks to conform to made me feel like I lost my balance and was floating in some strange land. MacGyver didn't care, he just found a new place to lay down, and went back to sleep.

    The day was just beginning, and it already felt warm to me. I sat up and peered behind the blinds without opening them so as not to wake my husband up, looking out at the trucks far away. No passenger vehicles were near us, at least on the side I observed. It was like having the playground all to myself. In the few moments before my husband awoke, I relished the silence that was all around me. Even though I could hear the distant rumble coming from the trucks running all night, it was more silence than I usually heard at this time of the morning. By the time the sun was this bright at home, there were people yelling out the windows at each other, car doors slamming with people getting ready for morning commutes and child shuffling, carpools honking, and dogs barking. Here, none of that was going on. And instead of being surrounded in a crowd, for what seemed like miles, there was a vast open stretch of nothing.

    So here I was, the first full day of my trip to whatever it was that was supposed to happen. In theory, it was the first full day of my trip around the country. But that was just the exterior of what would happen. This was something I wanted to do just to do it. I wasn't obsessively taking notes over everything that was happening so I could have a laundry list of details in front of me and no sense of spirit of the trip, which is what usually happened to me when I ran around with a notebook pretending I was some astute reporter. This time around as I sat in the van, I just let the place sink into me, and let this moment create its own memory. The wonder of the new and out of ordinary didn't need a recording in order to remain with me.

    Soon, my husband awoke, and we repacked the van to get back on the road. The bed was rolled up, all of the stuff that we put in the front of the van to make room for us while sleeping was put in the back. The visor that had been our nighttime privacy barrier which shielded us from the morning light was put away. There was a trip to freshen up in the rest stop bathroom by taking a quick wash-up so as to pass as decent in public, and to get teeth brushed. In my home town of Long Island, this hygiene routine would probably be considered roughing it, and most definitely unsuitable for ladies. Which made it all the better, so far as I was concerned. As I scrubbed my teeth in the public restroom and the occasional female traveler strayed in, I felt like I was a teenager sneaking out of my bedroom in the middle of the night, thumbing my nose at hometown traditions. The ultimate rebellion, and I didn't even have to get drunk to do it.

    Our travels today would take us to Tennessee, and hopefully the Smokey Mountains, which was in eastern part of the state near Knoxville. It was about four hundred miles away from where we were, which amounted to about seven hour's drive. The sooner we got on the road, the better. But there really wasn't any rush, not the kind where one had to be at the office in an hour and still had thirty things to do before getting there. It was just a guide, a goal that would lead us to the next thing that we had to do, eventually. There was no hurry. No hurry at all. Just the call of the road, and the next thing that we would go to.

    So now we drove down the road, in bucolic valleys hidden away by the mountains that surrounded them. It still seemed unreal that this was the way that I would be spending the next month, watching the miles click away on the van and slip away on the highway. Mountains passed by and greeted us, and humans who were stationary for the day emerged from their homes to go about their lives. Fellow Americans whom I had never seen before and would never see again merged with the scenery that I witnessed.

    It was easy to think that all was well in that valley, to depersonalize all who I saw into specks that rested within a pastoral scene, one which didn't include personal struggles or spiritual battles. It was easy to look at the mountains and think, how beautiful, and forget the battle that nature waged each day, against man, and for survival amongst its other neighbors. A beautiful morning with bright sun and a warm spring breeze; the perfect setting for this day of travel. But it was better to remain observant and see all that was there for what it was, creatures waking up to another day to find its own niche to survive, and to live off the hope to thrive.