D(r)iving into New States

Thursday, October 26, 2006 ~ Hillsville, Virginia


I walk into Shoney's Restaurant joyful and grateful for my life and journey. Although dinner isn't very good, the server is so outgoing and heartful, his energy is all the food I need.

As I get up to leave, though, my mood undergoes a 180-degree shift.

Suddenly, I feel out of place, displaced...perhaps even misplaced. Suddenly, I don't know how I fit in, where I belong. Suddenly, I feel lost.

Yes, I'm without a conventional home. But that isn't new. This feeling is.

I step out into the cooling Hillsville night. It's dark now and nothing is familiar.

Nothing is familiar....

That's it!

Nothing is familiar!

I've covered lots of territory in 23 months -- 38 states, to be precise, many of them multiple times.

Recently, though, many of the roads have been familiar ones. This was my fifth visit to Michigan, for example.

With so much else in my life so unsettled, it's been reassuring to know where I am, to know my way around, as I do now in southern Michigan and quite a few other parts of the country.

Hillsville is different. I've never been this far south in Virginia. Nor have I ever driven through the Carolinas, Georgia or Alabama, my anticipated direction in coming days.

Put another way, I'm about to venture into new states...and not only States of the Union.

The disorientation I feel in this moment is perfect. It's a direct consequence of breaking old patterns and new ground.

It's heralding the new beginning I knew my visit to Canada would initiate,

It's not comfortable. But that discomfort is now balanced with understanding and excitement.

If I have a sense of the states I'll be traveling to, I don't yet know what they will look or how they will feel.

It's all new territory I'm driving into, diving into -- in every aspect of my life.

From those new states, my life will never look the same again.

Photo by Mark David Gerson: the view from the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Hillsville, Virginia