The highways out of town are suspended on concrete pillars above the marshes and brackish water inlets that wash over Louisiana. It’s beautiful. Traffic is also at a standstill presumably due to the Saint’s game about to start. I haven’t gassed up yet and I really, really have to pee.

Inch off the highway over an hour later. Find the middle of town easily as there’s only one road in and out. Gas up, standing at the pump, a chorus of lion’s roars emanate from my empty belly. Skipped breakfast yet again. One bar in this little Podunk, walk in through saloon style doors, over scuffed dark floorboards as all four occupants of the joint turn and stare.

“Hi there. You guys serve food?” I say to break the mildly awkward silence.

“No hun,” says the female bartender who ended up being the owner alongside her husband behind the bar. “But we’ve got pulled pork warming in the crock pot and warm rolls and some slaw ready for the game. Grab a plate.”

The other two at the bar are their neighbors. I join their little party for the first half of the game, trading stories. I can tell they are a little worried for me in their half smiles. They way many adults look at me when I tell them I’m on the road by myself. I probably shouldn’t tell people that but hell, then I wouldn’t make any friends. They are sincere as they come though and wish me luck when I deign it’s safe enough to brave the highway pre/post-game mass exodus.

It hadn’t settled in me until now, that feeling… I knew it’d come all along but had been hoping all the same it never would. The comedown -but I’m sober as I’ve ever been. (Bud Lite doesn’t count.)

I’m driving home. My venture near the end and what have I learned? Coffee is life – and don’t drive ten year old tires through the desert. Something more profound than that, I’m sure but it’ll take weeks for me to sort through the layers of this new skin I wear; foreign yet familiar and glowing with new hope…and in desperate need of a long bath and good scrub.

Summer’s long gone, but the warm Louisiana sun masks autumn’s hurried retreat as the miles bleed north and the colors fade from southern greens to a few lingering Midwestern fall’s furious reds and blazing yellows, to the stark browns and trees just becoming barren in the chilled October winds on flat Illinois plains.

My meager belongings scattered in boxes throughout Wisconsin, my soul waiting still in the dark shadows of the Redwoods and my heart beating against the tide of the ocean. I will come back, back to this dreamer’s landscape, but for now there is work to be done. Things to give back.

I’ve been taking taking taking, each breath of air and beauty glimpsed and feeling felt on high a precious gem added to a mosaic now near complete. I am full, and ready to unleash a tide of creation and positive energy back into the universe from whence it came. All of His wealth and His creation and glory coursing through my veins from living on the road, learning the curves and crests of His kingdom on earth, a reflection of His Kingdom above. And, I’ve got this killer tan.

My cells are on fire. This is bliss. Crank down the window and filter Nahko through the Bluetooth speaker on the dash.

I see God in the darkest things, in the quiet of night I hear villages sing, there’s a demon in that dragon purge it out…

I fear nothing, no thing fears me, justice has different hats for different days…

I feel God in the slightest wind, at the rate I manifest every dream deepens, and I know I never want to stay the same.

“Awhoooo!” I howl out the window and burn rubber through the last glimpses of a dream. Who I was, thought I was, am and want to be, as well as the stranger I appear as now, all fighting for purchase in the forefront of my brain. Pieces and more pieces to the puzzle.

I’ve seen the eastern sun rise against an Atlantic daybreak as a child, and that same sun but one day older, set on the Pacific – me sitting on the sidewalk of a quiet hill in San Francisco. I’m not sure what’s left for me back where I’m headed, but I’ll soon find out.

Taylor has offered to put me up at her little farmhouse outside Chicago, but that’s a long haul and the sun is creeping down upon the horizon at my left. A Walmart or suburbia neighborhood would be ideal, but somehow I’ve driven into a Children of the Corn B flick remake and it is all corn stalks and county roads and what the hell how did I end up in Arkansas?? I wasn’t even supposed to drive through Arkansas. Whoops, too much daydreaming about my profound future to listen to my Siri. Idiot.

I retreat to my fallback trick I learned in NorCal – find a hospital parking lot. Now, calling the single floor E.R complex with a fitness center next door a bon-i-fied hospital would be a stretch, but I’m bone tired, and I’ve driven quite far enough out of the way.

Pull Delilah into an empty slot near an outbuilding and a plain, fenced in structure resembling a barracks. If not for my sleep deprivated mind I may have noticed the strange setup and large, painted concrete rectangle enclosed within the fence.

Nope. Too tired as I tie towel ends off over the van windows, snuggle up exhaustedly and close my eyes. I’m the kind of tired that needs winding down before slumber, with so many impossible things on my mind. Brush my fingers through my greasy split ends and settle into the sweet and mild Arkansas October night, door slams from afar occasionally breaking the vibrant chorus of insects chirping into the night.

Think slates drift to dreamscapes.  Remember the chill in the air under the moon in Estes Park against the backdrop of elk siren mating songs – or many miles north and to the west of there, behemoth redwood giants creaking in an otherwise dead silence, soft pine bed underfoot. Slip deeper then – “WHHHHRRRRR WHHHOOOOOOOSSSHHHHH WHOOOSHHH WHOOOSHHH WHOOOSHHH!!!”

Sit straight up wild eyed as the van begins to shake and a growing rumble fills the air. They’ve caught me now! Towing me away to meet my maker with myself in the back all the while. Rip my towel-curtains off the window and let out all my breath at once as I see the helicopter landing on the other side of the fence next to me.

I parked next to the emergency helicopter landing pad. Not in fact being towed. Idiot…Stuff the towels back over the windows and fall back again onto my warm foam mattress, a familiar buffer of foldout chairs stacked on my right, my machete floating somewhere inaccessible about the back, more likely to stab me in the back as I slumber than ward off any enemy. Turn off my rambling mind again and finally sleep.

Wake shortly after the sun, hop out the side – skip the shoes – van in gear and get the hell outta Arkansas. Peace. It’s like I’ve been on that spinning playground ride. You know the one, the really dangerous one that you hold onto for dear life while someone continues to whip you at breakneck speeds, laughing maniacally and grinning wildly all the time til’ a body inevitably flies off and eats shit.

I can’t maintain this speed forever, else I too go flying, and so the ride is slowing. But I’ve grown for every circle spun and I carry the lessons with me when I step off onto the flat sturdy ground again, head spinning.

The landscape is starting to show more primary colors as the air cools a bit and the miles catch up with a more northern autumn and its beautiful progression to a starkly naked fall. I’m all thoughts, lightning bolts and balderdash, only kept from floating up and away by the seatbelt pressed from hip to shoulder.

Illinois greets me a lifetime or an afternoon later, I couldn’t tell, with endless soy and corn fields and the rich stank of livestock. And all its stupid tolls. I hate this state. But Taylor lives here in a cozy little farmhouse outside of Chicago with her hubby and it’s been too long since we’ve broken bread. County lanes and pull up the gravel driveway, snag the hidden key from under the 😉 and let myself in. Tay and Brentley are still at work.

Make a beeline for the shower. There’s black dirt under my nailbeds and I’m not sure if the bottom of my feet will ever be scrubbed pink again, brown and calloused as the Native Americans’, treading a lifetime, light of step as not to disturb nor destroy the earth. But seriously I stink. Crank the handle to hot and holy begeezus that’s cold! There’s no hot water. Of course. I laugh out loud so as not to cry instead.

Oh well, retreat to the back porch that looks out over their fields, spread a blanket on the afternoon-sun warmed wood while the wind blusters a bit and just lie there awhile and breathe. Bask in the glory of the day, another precious, beautiful day. Strum a few notes on my guitar and scribble a few words in my book.

Tay is home before long. Hug like sisters and I can’t help myself putting my hand on her barely rounded belly. My little Godchild. Catchup, tales and smiles, she fights exhaustion and nausea, wearing it plainly yet proudly on her face. She’d wanted this for a long time, but the little loved one is not making it easy for her.

Brent home and fixes the shower. Hallelujah. Scrub and scrub and scrub as dirt all the way from Dallas days before, washes down the drain. Have a happy, quiet little dinner, light laughter and good company. We will continue our separate lives in the morning, but step back from the rush for this moment and just be here, the night before life goes on. Until the morrow.

Wake rested in the guest room, Brent long gone at the firehouse and Tay off right after. Finish packing, sigh deep, lock the door and replace the spare key. Point my tires north and head home, or back to the place that used to resemble one. Winter will be coming soon so I must find a place for my sun child heart to rest easy and warm while I brace for the change and the unforgiving cold.

Still soaring though, in my head and in my heart and over the Chicago Skyway catching the morning sun that lights the city skyline on fire in the distance. This is familiar now, I’m running out of white lines and pavement, and money… definitely money.

Twenty-five years and my life is still, trying to get up that great big hill of hope, towards a destination.

I realized quickly when I knew I should, that this world was made up of this brotherhood of man, for whatever that means…

I’m rushing now, galloping through the gates while the portcullis closes behind me. One door closing while the Lord opens a window on a different horizon. Familiar exits and suburban towns blurring along beside me and Milwaukee appears on the green road signs like a fond memory I had just now recalled.

God knows I’ve changed. But am I the moth just emerged? Or the caterpillar yet sealed in a silk cocoon merely awaiting the circumstance of my next metamorphosis, blanketed in a summer high yet subdued by the constant roll of the highway and roar of the ocean, floating outside the breakers – just out of reach.

It doesn’t feel like the end when Delilah’s tires brush up against the curb of a two-hour parking slot on Water St., outside the Milwaukee Ale House. It’s unseasonably warm and sunny, as if to ease my transition from a summer now dissipated in full.

I’m back but my head is still spinning madly in L.A. I shift into park. My eyes an eagle’s, looking out over the badlands and circling high above South Dakota Mountains. Put on my shoes, lace them up for the first time in weeks. Heart beats in Venice Beach, keeping time with the skaters dropping in and a perpetual tide breaking upon the sand. Pull a hat on backwards over my tangled, sun streaked hair and walk down the street. Soul as old as time and young as a sapling, sprouting new shoots and taking to root beneath soft earth in the heart of the redwoods. City sirens in real time a familiar lullaby to my ears. Gray matter soaked rather, way back in Denver and my senses still afire in the night, watching the house band from a barstool on Bourbon St. where the doors never shut, the whiskey always flows and the music stops for no man nor beast nor bar close, while the devil fiddles away.

‘Welcome home,’ they said to us when Michael and I first began this journey – way back at Shangri La under an oaken forest. September and October have seen me around the country and sent me back from whence I began. I don’t ever want to come down, but I’m crashing through the troposphere into earth, full speed, lightyears older yet as green as a wavering fawn. A thousand more questions for every answer. It’s heavy and impossible, what I’ve taken in. Like trying to put the whole beach in a sand bucket. But it’ll sift in time. For now, I’m going to walk into the Milwaukee Ale House and have a drink with my friends. Tell them about a very, very long drive. Welcome Home.