Hit the road...

Our family, like most of the families in our small town, did not take vacations every summer. Money was tight and time off was spent visiting family or putting up the hay. Some summers we would go to the beach for a weekend with friends but family trips were rare occasions.
One year my daddy began assembling a metal frame in the backyard behind the barn. Slowly pieces of plywood were added and little jalousy windows were put on each side. A door with a window closed in the contraption and suddenly the shape made sense. Daddy was building a camper for the back of his red pick up truck. Painted cream and red, it fit perfectly in the bed of the truck and we were ready for our great adventure... a cross country trip to Colorado and all unknown parts in between.
My cousin Lorene joined Gayle and me sitting in the back in green and white webbed aluminum yard chairs that tipped when daddy turned too sharply. Humming down the highway in those days before air conditioning, the little windows provided a breeze so we were able to survive Kansas in the summertime. We kept a bottle of alcohol to wipe the travel dirt off our faces when we stopped for meals.
Mama cooked every meal we ate on that trip, often over a campfire or in a pressure cooker on a gas single ring burner. This trip was no getaway from that daily task of food preparation. We carried food from home, meat from our beef cattle, vegetables from our garden, and bought other food as we needed it on this pilgrimage across the country.
At night, mama and daddy climbed up into the bedspring mounted just beneath the roof of the camper. If they sat up quickly, they bumped their heads. We slept below stretched out in a row with the sweet obliviousness of youth to any bedtime discomfort.
There were no KOA campgrounds and we generally stopped at parks that could provide a bathroom, picnic table and a flat place to park. Once in Kansas we drove 100 miles searching for a tree with shade for breakfast. We gave up and ate in the hot sun.
There are many memories of that trip cross country in my memory bank, but one feeling still pops to the surface when I see the old faded crumbling wreck of that camper parked behind the barn at my parent’s home... the feeling of scary excitement and hope that comes when you are leaving behind all that is familiar for the great unknown. Every day was an adventure, a new place with people and country we had never seen before and would never see again. I drank sarsparilla in a bar in Deadwood, rode up Pike’s Peak, marveled at the great flat plains of Kansas with few trees, breathed in the damp greenness of the West Virginia mountains and as my world’s horizons stretched, so did my soul. I learned that the world around you might look different than home, the folks you meet may speak with a different accent, but we are all more alike than different and my soul stretched to meet this wider world, a world full of possibility and kinship.
Several years ago I embarked on this writing camping trip of public self revelation. I remember the scary feeling of hitting the “send” button and watching the revealing words I had written go traveling out into the ether carrying bits and pieces of my soulwork to each of you. As the years have passed, you have written back sometimes taking me to task, sometimes telling me a piece of your journey, sometimes writing just to say hello. Some of you I know well and some of you are virtual strangers to me. And yet, you are all dear companions on my trip into the unknown. Sometimes I daydream about an open house at Sabbath Rest Farm where we could sit under the shade trees eating real creamed corn, potato salad, fried chicken, green beans, drinking sweet tea and catching up with each other’s worlds.
To jump off into the deep swimming hole in the flowing river of life, to make oneself transparent to strangers as well as loved ones, to drive off in the back of a camper to parts unknown, is to follow in the footsteps of Abraham and Jesus who each left the comforts of home for new places and people. The joy of the journey is not limited to the destination but includes the travel time needed to reach your goal. The old hymn says it best... The Lord has been so good to me, I feel like traveling on. Until that blessed home I see, I feel like traveling on. So I travel on, exploring new places, finding parts of myself that need to see the light of day, giving thanks for the wonderful cross country trip of life that began with my loving Creator. And I am blessed to have you sitting beside me in the aluminum lawn chairs, tipping me over now and then, holding my hand as we travel on together. Thanks be to God.