Finding Ourselves: the new/old American journey
Jon and Pearl and I left Pawleys Island, South Carolina to travel across North America. We left family, friends, fulfilling jobs (where we’d met), wonderful coworkers and volunteers. We left a good life for the allure of travel, to see new landscapes and to soak up the continent that compelled us to go. If not now, when?
Tidal Creek, Brookgreen Gardens, Pawleys Island, South Carolina
We both love to experience new places and cultures and traveling together on vacation, domestically and abroad, brought us closer. While a seed of a thought to travel full time had been planted, the actual plan to go was accelerated by the housing market. The house sold quickly and that precipitated the rest; in the week before leaving, we sold a car and gave away everything save the contents of a 5’ by 5’ storage unit. Even those stored possessions are mostly unnecessary except for meaningful family pieces, but securing that little room provided a sort of mental transition to having only the contents of travel.
The leaving part was bittersweet. I am wholeheartedly excited for this endeavor, but family and hard work at a career I loved - and fulfillment and community therein - were not easy to leave, even for this enriching choice.
We are not unique in what we are doing. As we go to see America and the cultural and natural resources it holds, we know we join a collective of those doing the same and the legions of those who have gone before. Our families, friends, and colleagues championed this spirit and sent us off feeling excited, uplifted, and overflowing with gratitude. We collected their stories of favorite places and tales from the road.
You cannot help but feel like an explorer when you see prehistoric rock formations, petroglyphs and pictographs, brachiopods, cephalopods, and other “pods” left behind in limestone. When you see a border town in Mexico and U.S. Customs stations and the first transcontinental postal route from St. Louis to San Francisco. When you see desert plants on land that was once covered by a shallow ocean. Where people have studied and learned and determined how these landscapes and ecosystems function and how they continue to evolve and be affected by change. When you learn more about the displacement of native peoples across centuries to create America’s resources.
We may all be seeking the same fundamental things embarking on such expeditions (I hope to learn more on what compels us to venture). I am sure some of the objectives or intentions overlap, be it through cross country travel, visiting a park, overlanding, RV’ing, van living, or walking new trails. The spirit of adventure is alive and well and its roots run deep, from early nomadic tribes to immigrant settlers of this country. The America you find may differ from the one I see as it is illuminated by personal perspective, outlook, and encounters. Each journey, then, becomes an adventure, even if the intent and the navigation are universal. There is something in us that wants to explore, to restore, to be in nature. Mostly, though, there is much to see. In this collective journey to find America, we can hope to find a little bit more of ourselves.
