Road Trips are My Zen

 Road trips are my Zen, my meditation, my solitude. Driving on a forgotten two-lane road is my opportunity to be mindfully present.

When on a journey, I am not interested in meeting people, in engaging in conversation or asking how others came to be where I am at that same moment in time. It is only later when reflecting on the randomness of that coming together for the blink of an eye that I might wonder about the people I come in contact with along the way.

Rather, I revel in the simple act of observing; of scanning the horizon where jagged flashes of lighting strike the barren desert in a far-off storm; of watching a herd of antelope spring over a barbed wire fence and race toward the distant mountains; of witnessing a flock of wild turkeys pecking undisturbed in the grass beneath a stand of pine trees; of inhaling the green expanse of a wide caldera once the epicenter of white hot lava spewing skyward and now a grassy plain where elk graze.

Being present in the moment allows the memories of these sights, however fleeting, to remain in the mind’s eye long after the journey ends.