The road to no where is everywhere
Each day is anew, but it is the nights that bring adventure. The night is when we hunt for a place to shower and sleep. Every shower is memorable. Whether it be in the city, sneaking into university gym shower rooms or moldy walled, dead bug encrusted sheds that make me feel like I'm getting dirtier, rather than cleaner; they all stay fresh in my mind. I could probably best track my route not with roads on maps but from the places I stopped to bathe. I can describe to you how the curtain was thin like the plastic of a panty liner and tried desperately to cling to my legs, or I could tell you about the greasy sensation of the gas station floor. I could detail the pressure of the water: sometimes a highway of wasps at rush hour, or light apple blossoms falling slowly to the ground in a soft summer breeze.
The nights are getting cold. Church parking lots are our main choice of quiet locations to seek salvation. I throw coats and laundry, both clean and dirty atop my blanket in a pile to keep warm. On the especially bitter, frost warning eves, I wear several layers of garments and socks. With the blanket tucked tight over my head I make a tent where my exhale incubates my body and I lull off to sleep. Often I'm awoken in the mornings when a limb slips out of the warm perimeter my body has created and the cold sheet of the mattress splashes against my skin.
It seems every minute of every day the trees are turning more and more vibrant. I feel like I'm watching them change colours in slow motion right before my eyes. I'm driving through valleys and mountains; lakes and rivers lay some 40-100 feet below. Windmills line distant hills and the occasional farm dots the forest landscape. I see the sun set every evening but the excitement and wonder of its beauty never ceases.
I look at the red patches of new skin on my fingers. I smile because I know these blemishes were blisters that formed when gripping the tools I used to tend my future garden, before I left home. While being on the road can sometimes feel like it's been oh so long, my body shows me otherwise. It's when the scars disappear; the hair grows long; the body shrinks away, that I know it is time to come home less I forget who I am out here.
The nights are getting cold. Church parking lots are our main choice of quiet locations to seek salvation. I throw coats and laundry, both clean and dirty atop my blanket in a pile to keep warm. On the especially bitter, frost warning eves, I wear several layers of garments and socks. With the blanket tucked tight over my head I make a tent where my exhale incubates my body and I lull off to sleep. Often I'm awoken in the mornings when a limb slips out of the warm perimeter my body has created and the cold sheet of the mattress splashes against my skin.
It seems every minute of every day the trees are turning more and more vibrant. I feel like I'm watching them change colours in slow motion right before my eyes. I'm driving through valleys and mountains; lakes and rivers lay some 40-100 feet below. Windmills line distant hills and the occasional farm dots the forest landscape. I see the sun set every evening but the excitement and wonder of its beauty never ceases.
I look at the red patches of new skin on my fingers. I smile because I know these blemishes were blisters that formed when gripping the tools I used to tend my future garden, before I left home. While being on the road can sometimes feel like it's been oh so long, my body shows me otherwise. It's when the scars disappear; the hair grows long; the body shrinks away, that I know it is time to come home less I forget who I am out here.