Almost Home

I can’t wait to get home and see my family, but I am going to be sad when this is over. This has been the best time of my life. I have met the most wonderful people. I have crossed 1824 miles and never felt alone because people helped me every step of the way, inviting me into their home, driving me back to my leaving off point, feeding me, making me snacks, handing me money, and joining me for a mile or twenty. There is something so beautiful about living by the grace of the kindness of others.

And then there is the beauty and freedom of the open road: cows grazing under a story book canopy of ponderosa pines in Northern Arizona, chunks of ancient volcanic rock flowing over and around red baked New Mexico dirt, a perfect circle of green corn in a sea of brown dustbowl wheat fields in Oklahoma, the vast blue sky of Kansas with one solitary windmill creaking and sighing in the easterly wind, trees submerged up to their ankles in the flooded banks of the Missouri, a patchwork quilt of lemon yellow corn, white farm houses and forest green soybeans in Grant Wood’s Iowa, and white and black spotted cows emerging cautiously from red barns in Wisconsin to gaze at the strange cyborg creature passing by so leisurely.

1824 miles, every step of it beautiful.  Just a trip across the lake and a few more miles, and I’ll be home.

Home is so layered and complex. My home in Tucson. My mom’s home. My dad’s home. My home town. My family’s home towns. The little home I carry on my back each day. All the home’s I’ve been invited into on this trip. I have not felt homeless one day of this trip. I feel homefull.

Thanks for watching over me.

Love,
-Laura