The Blind Man Society

So, I’m sitting here thinking about a recent adventure I had.  I decided to walk out of the town I live in, and do a bit of exploring.  I packed a backpack, and my berimbau and was out the door in a matter of minutes.

I walked for 8 hours straight.  28 miles later, it was dark and 10pm at night.  I stopped at a motel and got a room.  I unpacked my things, and sat in the bottom of the bathtub in the dark as the hot water came down on my sore legs and started filling up around me.  I just meditated in the heat and the dark, and a half hour later crawled into bed and slept.

I woke the next morning to think about my walk from the night before.  I passed through wilderness, civilization, rich areas and poor.  I walked 15 blocks through an area where people regularly are victims of crime and then to where it was “safe” to walk at night.  I watched the sundown, and welcomed the cooler air since it was over 100 degrees as I walked.

The point of this, is that I had a traveling backpacking adventure in the town and surrounding areas and didn’t even need to leave the city, state or country to do it.  I made all the mistakes of someone who hasn’t done this for 15 years, learned quite a few valuable lessons, and realized that the road to self reliance is a journey not a destination.

By the time I returned home the following night I had logged 58 miles on foot.  Naturally, I went to the coffee shop to watch sundown before I ever got home.  I was so tired, that caffeine did nothing, and while it was nice to be outside, I didn’t even absorb what was going on really.  My skin was near fire from sunburn, and after Blow Torch Lady gave me a strawberry pastry to eat I limped home and flopped over for the night.

The lesson I learned out of all this, is highly interpretive.  Personally I felt overjoyed to come out of the “wilderness” to see a Verizon store.  After eating a can of beans, nothing was standing in the way of my McDonald’s Big Mac Meal.  Thankfully, my route was dotted with coffee shops where I could stop and rest and get to know some beautiful women without home shop advantage (I now navigate the area, by how many blocks from a certain coffee shop things are) and well, I’m rambling.  But really those two days had it all – the excitement of the open road, beautiful women, automotive symbolism, the list goes on…

I hope all of you have either had a good adventure recently, or can soon.  I needed this one bad to recharge the writing batteries, and plug the energy power cord back into myself. 

Have a great day everyone, as always comments are welcome in the box below.