License plates
It has been a slow week, catastrophe-wise. I’ve had no unsupervised whitewater rafting excursions. Fishing has been mild and uneventful, and I’m stationary so nothing’s broken on the bus. I did nearly fall in the river several times.
I’ve now spent more time and covered more real estate around the Snake River than I have any other river. Each section has its own personality, and many ‘personalities’ can be experienced in an afternoon’s drive. As the serpentine name suggests, the water slithers and bends, wriggling its way through massive farms and small towns.
This ‘travel like a hermit crab’ lifestyle beckons ‘hit the road’. I can pack up and be on the road in less than an hour, and most mornings are a parade of rv’s rolling out or in. Where are they going? Where’d they come from? Where should I be going? Should I be going? To mute those voices, I try to spend some time each morning in reflective writing. It has become my metronome.
Many of the rv’rs I’ve met greet me with their curriculum vitae:
“Al Dyson, 83, Mesa, Arizona, 31 foot class C motorcoach, one dog and one wife, quite a bit younger. Here for three more days. I was born in October. My two sisters were as well, and we all married people with October birthdays. Then my wife died and I married another lady born in October.”
I didn’t speak one word in the first five minutes of the conversation. I could recite his entire history. I was told by friends later that I committed the two cardinal sins in an rv park: I made eye contact with him and then actually spoke words out loud to him. That was his invitation to open the history books of his life. He and his new October were very pleasant but had no interest in my travels, other than to point out I was all alone in such a big coach.
What stood out to me were the details of their travels. Their first trip was four-thousand two-hundred and eighty-six miles in four months. I travelled sixteen hundred miles in a week but haven’t done much since. The highways will still be there tomorrow, so there is no reason to not sit and absorb the surrounding culture. I had no concept of Declo Idaho, but it has given me some significant memories, including the picture above. I hosted a dear friend this week and got terribly out-fished. She caught a six-pound bass! The truth is her catch was spread out over nine different fish that totaled six pounds. I snagged one.
Another part of rv life is license plates. I have not added that to my routine yet, but I get approached often with the same question: “What part of Texas?”.
Each encounter, even brief ones, adds another knot in the webs of our existence on Earth. These connections inspire a more panoramic evaluation of our lives. Zoom out from your own backyard and draw lines to every place you’ve visited. How many people did you interact with in those locations? How many of them took something with them from the conversation that bettered their lives, and possibly passed that connection to someone else?
Quickly, we can be filled with warm thoughts regarding the impact we might have had in humanity’s existence. Perhaps some pride will swell inside that says you’re worth being known by people. You have life to offer other people, always. What a privilege to have the opportunity to be a positive memory in someone’s life, anywhere, at any time.
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