'This is where you expand the size of your soul'

Jan 21, 2024

Something I tell people when they’re about to take their first solo road trip. I describe to them a feeling they might not know yet but are about to experience poignantly, which could be a turning point. It’s this:

You are going to see incredible things, beautiful things, out of the corner of your eye, and at some point you’re going to want to stop and have a look. Do that, take it all in. But there will be a time when you stop to appreciate a landscape—a desert floor, a valley, a sunset—but somehow it won’t go in. You’ll be staring right at it but it’s too vivid, the colors too beautiful, they’ll land on your eye but they won’t pierce you. It’s because there’s a capacity for appreciation, a capacity for beauty. There’s a limit to what you can hold alone. And it’s here you have a choice. You can decide this feeling is loneliness, and that it’s time to stop this solo sojourn, find someone to share beauty with. Or you can decide this is where you expand the size of your soul. And you stay there parked on the side of the road and study every detail of that landscape until it fucking fits.

That 10 months I lived in my car in the Southwest this became basically a daily practice. Valley of the Gods, Mexican Hat, Taos Pueblo, Madrid on the Turquoise Trail, Prescott and Jerome AZ, the Very Large Array, Las Cruces, Sedona…