Excited to share the first ever guest post on UNMEASURED, with hopefully more to come. I loved reading about Rachel’s roadtrip and her honest reflection on how hard it can be to remember and hold on to the magic of adventure. Read more about Rachel in her bio at the bottom of the page, including info on her upcoming workshop in New York. - Laurel
I miss my road trip.
I cringe a little at how commonplace it sounds to say that one misses a meaningful trip from one’s past, but this missing is true on a level I’ve never experienced.
I’m a veteran traveler, and a veteran solo traveler, too. It always ups my levels of immersion and attention to be away from home by myself. But this trip was on a whole different level.
Just over a year ago, I set off on the great adventure that was #RSRSeesTheUSA. That’s the hashtag and affectionate pet name I gave this 12,000-mile, 2.5-month solo road trip across the United States, from Massachusetts to California and back.
(you can interact with this map at My Scenic Drives)
When I started this trip, the idea was that I’d take about two weeks to drive out to Joshua Tree where I was meeting up with my college friends for a joint birthday party long weekend at a swanky rented house. I’d visit some places I wanted to see along the way and get to see some friends I hadn’t seen since The Before Times of 2019. Then I’d have my friend reunion time, take another two weeks to come home along some as-yet-unplanned route, and that would be that.
I’ve long harbored the dream of road-tripping across the country. What better time to do it than a time when I was working independently and not beholden to a schedule of regular hours or set locations? So, I plotted the course for my journey out to Joshua Tree, figured I’d do some traveling and some working all mixed in together, and eventually figure out my route back home.
That… is not how this wound up working out.
I mean, yes, I did some traveling and some working all mixed in together, and I did eventually figure out my route back, but I also lived across California for a month while gas was at its highest price per gallon in decades.
I slept in my tent and the back of my car and a bunch of Airbnbs and among redwoods and by the ocean and in mountains and huddled against the wind.
I fell in love with southern Utah and visited one ninth of all the national parks in the country and a whole bunch more corners of natural world wonder on top of that.
I met and helped strangers in the desert and dealt with the awkwardnesses of going to the bathroom when no bathroom was actually there to be found.
I ate so many regional delicacies and did approximately none of the yoga I thought I’d do along the way.
I connected with people all across the ideological map in a time when COVID and political rhetoric meant that was quite a feat.
I let go of my inner planner and changed my route plans at the last minute, reminding myself over and over again that this was my trip, no matter how it unrolled.
I explored art museums and hiking trails and bucket list places and roadside attractions and remote oddities and major tourist hotspots.
I let my body take the lead in my decision making in ways I have had difficulty doing my whole life. It’s one thing to say that I want to let my brain take the backseat and quite another to actually make that happen, and to make it stick (as it has over the past year since I’ve come home).
I have been struggling for a year to write enough to capture and address all of what this trip brought me. It has felt like an insurmountable task, and so I’ve kept a barrier up (classic overwhelm reaction: it’s too much, so I won’t start any of it!), but it’s time to let that barrier down.
I know writing isn’t going to capture the entirety of this trip. The constant present-moment awareness that I had while on the road has already receded in the return to daily routines and expanding the independent work that I’m now doing on my own terms. Writing about this trip will never bring me back to that, and will never do it justice. And that’s as it should be. It was a solo experience I had that deserves to stand alone without being shared.
So perhaps I will borrow from Robyn Davidson’s words that keep coming back to me as I think about this trip. This passage is from the end of her book, Tracks, a memoir of her solo camel trek across the Australian Outback:
The two important things that I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step, making the first decision. And I knew even then that I would forget them time and time again and would have to go back and repeat those words that had become meaningless and try to remember. I knew even then that, instead of remembering the truth of it, I would lapse into a useless nostalgia.
My nostalgia for the ways I lived and felt on this trip is feeling very present with me here at the anniversary of it.
I have a nightly ritual of going through the photos on my phone from that exact date and deleting some of them to clear memory space. This week I’ve hit last year’s photos of #RSRSeesTheUSA. I have reveled in them, smiled at them, kept some, and been able to delete others with a KonMari style “thank you and farewell”.
I am holding onto my ability to be powerful and strong, and I am taking the first step through the overwhelm barrier to write about this profound experience.
I’ll leave you with the end of the exquisite corpse style experimental writing game I played throughout my trip where each day I wrote one sentence of an extemporized story without looking back at the previous days’ sentences. The 1100-word final product is a pretty accurate representation of what this trip felt like, and you can find the full thing on my blog. For now, I’ll leave you with the last few days’ worth:
She settled into bed to drift off with a smile in her heart. It was perhaps time for a rest, and yet the ending of an adventure is always sad to contemplate. What a jumble of experiences had been mosaic’ed into her brain, and how much life she’d had so vibrantly.
Left to right. 1. A pensive rainy afternoon in a cabin at Avalanche Ranch near Redstone, Colorado where the hot spring pools await you in the middle of the Rockies. 2. Misty, reflective Beaver Lake, Marble, Colorado. 3. Bright skies and hot sun baking down on Joshua Tree National Park in the California desert. 4. Sunset watchers and rocky Pacific outcrops. 5. The densest fog I’ve ever experienced was on this day, driving through off-season Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Long live tourist spots out of season. 6. Welcome to Texas. Really. This was at the tourist info rest area right across the border from Oklahoma. Next to it was a “beware of rattlesnakes” sign. 7. The view of Oljato-Monument Valley, not from the tourist path entrance, but from the private campsite where I arrived in the dark and woke up to this view. 8. Redwoods all to myself in the early morning at Limekiln State Park in Big Sur, California. Although the path was technically closed for post-fire repairs, a sly wink from the campground manager sent me on a quiet forest bathing walk. 9. Hiking down into the hoodoos (that’s the actual rock formation name) at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. This is a photo of me admiring geology and humming Magic Dance from Labyrinth in my head (“the power of voodoo, who do? you do…”).
About the author
Rachel Ropeik is an educator, facilitator, adventurer, experience builder, and pirate who brings thoughtful, playful, and progressive approaches to catalyzing change in arts and culture. She currently works independently with both individuals and institutions, combining professional and personal development in offerings like her upcoming Reorientation Retreat: Work/Life (reorient how your work meets your life...) on April 29 in New York City.
Rachel creates spaces where people can feel comfortable and inspired. She centers equity and experimentation and is known as an empathetic listener, an adaptive leader, and a people-oriented direct communicator.
Before going independent, Rachel’s arts education career spanned major art museums and travel companies in New York, London, Paris, and the internet. She can also perform a passable jazz dance combination.
Reading this post brings me back to the summer my daughters and I explored the United States on a two part road trip. Fond memories and an itch to do it again. Thanks for sharing!