CHAPTER 14

After Words

We finally lost the cabin and that chance to be totally self-sufficient, and are established in civilization. In a larger sense, we will never lose either the cabin or trucking. Both are chunks of our ‘home’ of life experience, and this is life’s real structure, the part we can ‘take with us.’

It takes a lot of doing to pilot a big rig to hell and back, as well as squeeze it up to many loading docks in between. Few are truly cut out for that life, and those pay high dues in time lost with family. I don’t know that Nick and I will get back into it, simply because of the physical demands—at least not as completely. We are waffling already, though, missing being on the road. One danger out there that I forgot to mention is: trucking gets in your blood.

When we watch the weather channel or see the national weather forecast, scenes from the road pass through our head like a video that starts running when jostled. The literal hardships of being in so many places have washed from memory. Excitement and adventure remain, like solid mementos in a treasure box.

Nick has spoken of what he gained from trucking. Facing danger, being at the limit of his perceived abilities—and getting through it—refined emotions and internal structures, he says. You are never the same, but the better for it. Your abilities remain expanded.

Trucking, for me, was like recovering a lost art, the art a child has of eagerly exploring new territory that opens out with each dawning day. Time never stands still, but at some point it seems that people do. We adults have our responsibilities, our well-fought-for turf, and we sit like bulldogs guarding it.

Some of us dogs always want to chew through our leashes (as a friend of mine puts it). We wonder if that grass over there is greener. Is it? Maybe yes; maybe no. It is likely a variety of colors, has rocks, and there will be thorns. Being able to go see—that freedom, I feel, is priceless.

I found many ‘America’s’ as we traveled. Towns and cities foreign to me were some other American’s home turf. I loved being a local for an hour or two, or a day, overnight, hearing their town stir to life and seeing their sunrise, shopping at their local grocery store and walking their sidewalks. Their weather was my reality when I was there, and their treacherous travel, mine, ours, as well. We watched seasons change according to climate, and the same home’s yard decorations change with them. We kept track of one family’s progress as they slowly constructed a home from bales of compressed straw and clay. Clerks and waitresses in places we frequented across the USA became as familiar as the cashier at the local grocery store.

One particular morning—not sure exactly where—we were holding our first cups of coffee and running along well before dawn alongside train tracks while a train was traveling the same direction. This in itself was exhilarating. We caught up with the engine right before our road took a turn. The engineer, who seemed to be drinking his own first coffee of the day in his lighted cab, glanced over at us and waved ‘howdy, neighbor.’ That gesture warms my heart every time I think of it. It felt like acknowledgement as one in the community of travelers, I guess.

Have I tempted you to take off down the road?

If you don’t have the driving skill or know someone who does (and further, someone with whom you could spend 24 hours a day, which includes nights, cheek to jowl) take a day trip to the next town. It’s almost the same. Forego the need for a reason or a particular destination—it’s the going. Mingle with the locals awhile, feel their world, overhear a joke, exchange a friendly word, make a purchase.

You can’t fail to benefit and expand yourself every time you look farther out your own window. Step off your beaten porch, my friend. You never know what’s around the next corner.

It might be something good.