New Horizons Pt.1

By the time we rolled out of Las Cruces in the late morning, the sun
was already beating down upon us from high in the sky, forcing us to
seek refuge in the air conditioned car, and naturally push on farther.
When you're on the road, that's what you do. Keep going, keep
searching, towards that goal that may not be totally apparent yet, but
will be when you catch a glimpse of it. So on we went, me in the
drivers seat and Tomasi sitting in the passenger seat. The person in
the passenger seat had to keep up on his duties, like checking the map
to chart our progress and scope future roads that show promise, and
putting on the perfect CD depending on our where we were. Rap in the
cities, folk and alternative music in the desert, and some hard classic
rock music when you're driving at 2 o'clock in the morning and your
eyes are ready to close but your body says keep going. After driving
through some side streets of Las Cruces, we were soon back on the road,
flying along Interstate 10, ready to continue the search.
It was the fifth day of the trip and we had started to get into a good
rhythm. So far everything had gone smoothly. The last few days had been
"driving days" through the desert, where there wasn't a whole lot to
see. Not to say I didn't enjoy it, but after hundreds of miles of
desert from California to New Mexico, I couldn't wait to see a few
trees. It was a good way to get some thinking done though, just driving
along the interstate, mile after mile, the cacti blurring by one after
another. Tomasi and I were the
kind of friends where conversation was never forced. When we wanted to
talk we'd talk, when we wanted some time to ourselves then that's what
we did. It was a quiet morning in the car, I think the Foo Fighters
were playing in the background but neither of us was really
listening.
I was thinking about The Trip, how it had started and if it was meeting
my expectations. I thought of the night a few months earlier when
Tomasi and I were hanging out at a party. We happened to see an atlas
lying on the counter and I started flipping through it. I came on the
state of New York and told Tomasi that he had to go there one day. I
had been there with my family the previous summer and had found it to
be like no other city I'd ever seen. We started talking, and we decided
to drive to New York after graduation. Of course all of our friends
thought we were just talking crazy, trying to be cool, but here we were
a few months later, driving on the highway through New Mexico, closing
in on El Paso, Texas. We'd done what everyone thought we would never
do, and the only people that weren't shocked were Tomasi and I.
Over my senior year I'd started to look differently at life. Part of it
was from some conversations I'd had with my friends, and part of it was
probably just the fact that I was getting older and soon to graduate
from high school. I would spend days in school, sitting in class,
wondering what we were all doing there. We were learning about
Calculus, or the Federalist papers, when we could have been out
exploring the world and trying to find some meaning for our lives. It
drove me crazy. That was what the trip was all about, to go out and
explore, do something different, and break out of the everyday mundane
life which seems to plague too many people in the world. I would spend
a lot of time looking at people, and think that it seemed like they
were in a fog, just kind of drifting through life like a programmed
drone. Nobody ever believes that they fall under this category, but
when something happens to make them reflect on their life, they look
back and may realize it was true.
In my senior year, I looked back and saw a lot of my previous 17 years
as a complete waste. Of course this wasn't totally true, but I guess it
partly was. I thought about what my priorities used to be, and how I
did some things just because that's how I was taught to think, not
because it was what I truly believed. I learned some things that I
guess all people learn one day, or at least I hope everyone learns.
Anyway, this trip was a way for me break out, and really put all of my
new values and beliefs to real life use. If there's one thing I hate,
it's when people (including me) come up with some great ideas or
beliefs but never do more than preach about them and never really put
them to use. I didn't want to become one of those people.
So here I was, driving on the highway in the middle of the desert, and
I felt like I was finally really living. Just going day to day, not
knowing where we were going to stay, just heading in the general
vicinity of New York. To me, that was living. After a few hours we
started to get hungry, and looked for a rest stop to eat some lunch and
switch drivers. We soon found one, a few miles before the Texas border,
and pulled in. We got out of the car and were immediately greeted by
the dry heat, and the loud blasts of noise from truckers pulling in and
out of the rest stop. We opened up the trunk and dug through it until
we had all of the necessary supplies. Propane stove, forks, and a
couple of cans of chili to heat up. When you're on the road you don't
worry about plates, you just eat it right out of the can once it's
heated up. Tomasi cranked up the stove and tried lighting it, but
nothing happened. After fiddling with it for a little while, we got
another propane canister from the car, but still nothing. Tomasi was
starting to get mad, banging on it and cussing at it, as if that would
somehow make it work. I sat at the table, watching him futilely attempt
to fix the burner, while also watching a Mexican family a few feet
away, the father also hopelessly working on trying to fix their
overheated van, which had obviously seen better days. The mother looked
calm, doing her best to keep her children under control and out of
their dad's way. I looked at the two of them, Tomasi and the father,
and how different they were reacting. The father was trying to fix his
van so his entire family wouldn't be stranded in the middle of the
desert at an isolated rest stop, miles from the nearest town. He was
calm, work seemed to be something he was used to, just a part of life
that he had learned to cope with. Life was hard, real, and he wasn't in
some dream world that is sometimes seemed I was in. Meanwhile my
youthful friend was impatiently trying to fix a meaningless burner, and
it was obviously getting the better of him.
"Oh, shit!" he finally said. He got up, took the burner, and tossed it
in the trash, stomping off towards the bathroom. It was our first
setback and he wasn't taking it well. I decided to take my usual
optimistic, enjoy life attitude. I sat on the bench we were at, looking
at the desert stretch on and on, until finally reaching some mountains
far in the distance. I put my hands behind my head and felt thankful
for being alive. Sometimes it takes some type of setback to realize how
good life really is, and how unimportant all of our so-called problems
really are. I could hear the little kids of the family playing,
bouncing a ball, chasing it, laughing, and acting so innocent and
joyful. I tried to imagine how scared their mother was. She sat there,
still looking calm, but she must have been so terrified. Stranded in
the desert, headed for who-knows-where, things must have looked so
bleak. But then the story took another strange twist, as the clock
continued to tick and a new stranger entered both of our lives.
While I sat on the table I heard a trucker yell something in the
general vicinity of the family and where I was sitting.
"Hey, y'all want some cantaloupe?"
He apparently had gotten it from a fellow trucker and couldn't eat it
all himself. Sure I said, as he dropped a cantaloupe on my bench and on
the family's bench, and then walked off after we both thanked him. I
was starving, so I got out our dull butter knife and started cutting.
That was probably the first piece of fruit we'd eaten since the trip
started and it's never tasted so good. Tomasi came back and I told him
what happened, and we both brightened up as we gouged big chucks of
cantaloupe and kept eating and eating. The mother then asked us, with
the little English she knew, if she could borrow the knife. We said
sure, feeling so great we could somehow help them out. She proceeded to
cut perfect, even slices for all of her kids, just like any good mother
would. It looked like it was their first meal in a while as well. Of
course she didn't eat any until after her entire family was full and
content.
Tomasi and I sat at our table, our spirits rising after every piece,
until the entire cantaloupe was devoured, the only evidence being the
rind, seeds, and juice that had managed to get all over our hands and
clothes. We were talking again, laughing, and looking at the map for
what was next. The mother saw the map, and asked if she could look at
it. Once again we were ecstatic to be able to help them, and we took
the map over, showing her how far it was to the nearest town, and how
far after that came El Paso. We couldn't communicate well but she
thanked us for the help, and we wished her good luck. We washed off our
hands, waved goodbye to the little kids, and then got back in the car,
where we could digest the cantaloupe, as well as what just happened at
that little rest station in the middle of the desert. It was one of
those experiences that I was yearning for, one that teaches you a
little about life, and makes you feel truthfully thankful. It was just
early afternoon, and we'd already had some great moments. Who knew what
else the open road would bring. We'd just have to keep driving, and
wait and see.