Blown-in-the-Glass Road Trip

My last week was one full of highs, and lows. Mountains and rivers (wow that sounds like something you'd hear at a youth retreat). Jon Steinbeck wrote the great American road trip novel, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, and at the beginning he makes a wonderful point:

"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."
The trip started out rough, with some fairly major car problems, but thanks to Larry, of Gary's Towing and Automotive, the rest of the trip was great, until some more fairly major car problems at the end. The Buffalo National River Trail was phenomenal. Starting out the first day we hit some great elevation climbs that took us up to some really great views. Let me say this, Arkansas is very much underrated in terms of beauty. It was like the Rockies, but much less steep. All of the same great vegetation and feel, with lots of water and cool breezes, but sadly no 14,000 ft. elevations.

I think what I enjoyed most about the trip was the fact that we had purpose every day. We woke up, usually made a pot of coffee, ate a quick breakfast (oatmeal with a bit of granola for me), and then hit the trail. No one really complained, other than the first few minutes of getting the ole body warmed up again--we all knew what we were there for, and got after it with a striking intensity. Hiking up those hills was gratifying for a number of reasons: 1) getting to the top is the best feeling ever. You can stand there and look at where you were and a warm sense of accomplishment will easily wash over you. 2) Pushing each other is crucial. Every day at least one of us wasn't bringing their 'A' game all of the time, especially me on the third day, and without the rest of the group it never would have happened. Sitting down and becoming complacent is just too easy, you have to keep on fighting.
Relating to that last point, I read Into Thin Air while we were on the trail. Reason being I wanted a tail about adventure, and the outdoors (the added bonus was the scathing tale of poor decisions made at unheard of altitudes). One of the points which Krakauer makes that I really loved was that without a team, a group that everyone can depend on, the trip will not succeed. You have to be able to trust each member to the fullest, and only in that will victory come about. We won, we hiked the trail, and although there was mud (and lots of it), poison ivy (more than any of us had ever seen, and caves that seemed to go on forever in vast darkness, the team took it down, and it was wonderful in the process. In the end I found that this trip, much like what my life has been for the past year and a half, took on a life of its own, and only in the end were we truly able to let go, and just let the trip be the person it so badly desired to become. When it became what it so badly wanted to become, we found how wonderful the journey had been, and how wonderful the trip home was actually going to feel.