Beginning

“I am thinking about spending this summer on the road, just getting in my car and driving around for a few months” Mikal said to me nonchalantly one day in the car about to drive up to our cabin in mid to late spring. I remember there still being some snow on the ground, but it was the mushy snow that seems to hang on too long as warmer weather comes around. I remember my first reaction being a mixture of excitement for him and a bit of yearning for that type of adventure myself. I asked him to elaborate, and he went on about not needing an internship and this potentially being his last summer to be completely free before graduating college. He mentioned wanting to go west, maybe go west into Washington and Canada before driving down the coast and heading down south to visit Blake in San Diego. Naturally, my mind starts racing, thinking about what that would be like, living out of a car, no agenda, no responsibilities, just going about life in a way that seems to put everything on pause for a bit. Mikal said something to snap my mind back to the present, “it could be fun if you and Gage came too.” When an opportunity like that opens up the spontaneity of it makes me want to just say “fuck it, I’m in” without thinking too rationally about it. But before the conversation changed, I had vowed to be in if I could swing it with graduating and starting a career soon. The next couple months go by with some talk about it here and there. I was finalizing where I would be working after school and had to make sure my company was okay with me taking some time off before starting full time. My boss had encouraged the break and told me to take as much time as I needed. Unfortunately, Gage did not get this blessing of freedom and couldn’t join on our adventure. I told Mikal I was in, and it was officially planned to head off in his car for some time. And that was basically the extent of the planning for the next few weeks.

With a few weeks until we were going to leave, our dedicated preparation had yielded a list of things we think we would need, not the actually purchasing of the items or setting anything up. The good thing about living out of a small car for 6 weeks is you can’t exactly pack everything you want to bring with you. It is just the basics; clothes, hammock, tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, cooking supplies, food, and some camp accessories. We thought we could gather it up pretty easily so did not put too much effort into prepping. I am sure our lack of preparation and planning lead to some pretty anxious parents, especially as we were doing our shopping the day before we left.

This next part is really hard to write about. I have gone back and forth on how much or to what extent I felt comfortable sharing this. I think it is best to just explain it, because it turned my road trip into something that I needed to do more than something I wanted. The night before graduation a really good friend of mine was killed in a random shooting while leaving the bar. A friend who encapsulated the idea of what road trips meant to me. Charlie was a free-spirited, goofy guy who found the best moments the ones of learning, traveling, and exploring what this life has to offer. Some of our best conversations were focused on the idea of continually living and experiencing life, oftentimes this led to sharing dreams of travel and adventure. A day or two before Charlie was killed, I was sitting on his bed having a conversation about some deep thoughts we were having, especially at a point of our lives where anything felt possible. We were sitting on his bed facing the wall where he had a bunch of art, a lot of it was his, and I pointed out a quote he had written out. It said, “You’ve gotta be willing to die if you wanna live”. It resonated with me, and we talked about what it meant to each of us. And now, given the horrific days that followed, will always be a bittersweet memory because it will be a quote that sticks with me as I go through life. A reminder of Charlie and a simple idea to always be striving to keep living passionately and intently.

This is also a theme I want to bring to this blog and the stories that I will be sharing. One word that comes to mind when I think about living passionately and intently is vulnerability. I believe the moments when you can truly be vulnerable about who you are often foster the closest relationships and deepest experiences. My intention with sharing stories is not only to give a recap of some of my favorite experiences, but a bit of an inside perspective into my mind and how I comprehend these specific points in life. In other words, I want to be vulnerable with my thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas. I want to share the hard things, the weird thoughts about life’s realest moments that rarely come up in conversation. In a way, writing these stories is for me, a method to document my experiences and work through my thoughts. But I also hope the reader takes something out of it, whether that be a good story or a different outlook on an idea they haven’t thought about before.

Lastly, this picture was taken in early July 2021, somewhere between Zion and Salt Lake City. Mikal and I had finished hiking in Zion all day and wanted to head north as far as we could that night, this is where we set up camp, off some random gravel road in the middle of nowhere. The milky way was showing off like I have never seen before and was making me feel some type of way, but that’s a story for another time.