A Year On The Road

//A Year On The Road

A Year On The Road

It’s been a year since I took off in the Traipsemobile, left Dallas and headed east. I feel like I ought to mark the occasion, if only to thank the people who have helped me so much along the way.

But I don’t really have much to say that isn’t already somewhere else on this website, in the Tweets or the Dispatches or even The Traipsetracks. Maybe the Traipsetracks, most of all. The songs I picked almost always gave a pretty good indication of what was on my mind on any particular day, whether it was a place I was passing through or  something going on in the world. Pick a song — and there’s been a new one almost every day — and I can probably tell you where I was when I chose it. Or at least where I was in my head.

I’m writing this from Alaska, about as far away from Texas as a road can take you. Which I guess is the whole idea, to see how far I can go without ever leaving the ground. There’s something satisfying in having one mile connected to the next, a traceable, re-traceable, path. I’m a long way from where I started, but I know how I got here, even if I don’t know why. Maybe this is how I make the world feel manageable, familiar, safe. I’m home everywhere I go. The view is different every morning, but I wake up in my own bed. There’s something kind of magic about that.

This trip isn’t close to over. It might not ever be.  I do know this has been the best year I’ve ever had. I don’t think a single day has gone by when I haven’t grinned like a fool. It feels like I’m getting away with something. I don’t know what, but something.

So I might as well keep going. I can’t think of any reason to stop.


There’s the sky, here’s the earth
This is the road for all it’s worth
It’s a ribbon, it’s a river, it’s a wave
It’s an arrow and it’s a snake
It’s asleep and it’s awake
And it stretches from the cradle to the grave

Thank God for the road
And the hubcaps and the headlights
And the mudflaps and the taillights
And the dim lights and the bright lights

Thank God for the road
And the miles that come between us
The little rains that come to clean us
The guardian angels who have seen us

Thank God for the road
No matter what it takes to drive it
Life and death can seem so private
Still you think you will survive it
Thank God for the road

There’s the sky, here’s the earth
This is the road for all it’s worth
It’s a ribbon, it’s a river, it’s a wave
It’s an arrow and it’s a snake
It’s asleep and it’s awake
And it stretches from the cradle to the grave

Thank God for the road
The soft shoulders you can cry on
The hard nerves you rely on
The fast curves you can die on

Thank God for the road
And the stars that shine above it
No matter what you once thought of it
You always knew you’d come to love it

Thank God for the road
And those old telephone poles
A cup of coffee and a sweet roll
When you’re trying to save your own soul
Thank God for the road

 

— Butch Hancock

By |2011-09-04T06:25:10-04:00September 4th, 2011|Dispatches|2 Comments

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