Breaking Radio Silence – The Call of the Road

When I first began to think of living and working on the road, I was thinking that if I wanted to do that in order to run from something instead of dealing with it, then it wouldn’t be a good reason to hit the road. But back then, I read three books by three women who hit the road that made me think about why I was feeling the call of the road: ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Wild’ by Cheryl Strayed, and ‘Tracks’ by Robyn Davidson.

In ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, author Eilzabeth Gilbert hits the road after a long and difficult divorce and first goes to Italy (the ‘Eat’ part of the book) where she learns to start accepting herself for who she is and start letting go of bullshit expectations about how to look and that it’s okay for a woman not to want to settle down and live and die in the suburbs (a big issue in her divorce). Then from there she journeys to India (the ‘Pray’ part of the book) where she has a ‘dark night of the soul’ which is when I think you reach the deepest part of yourself and live to tell the tale. Then finally, she lands in Bali and meets her next husband (the ‘Love’ part of the book) and finds a happily-ever-after (for a while as she divorces again though that divorce from what I’ve read was much more friendly than her first divorce). I think she hit the road and dealt with some serious shit but not in a way that was running from it, but in a way that gave her the space to deal with it.

In the book, ‘Wild’, author Cheryl Strayed hikes the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Oregon. After her mother’s death when Cheryl was in her early twenties followed by a difficult marriage and a drug addiction, she comes up with the idea to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. At times, she’s under-prepared and faced with challenges all along the way. But she’s all alone on that trail with her thoughts and feelings and that’s what she needed to deal with them. She proves to herself she can survive and make it in the world despite being knocked on her ass. I don’t think she was running from her feelings and trying not to deal with them, but instead, she was looking for a space to deal with them without distractions from life and other people. Trust me, this has had great appeal to me though I’m not into roughing it or sleeping on the ground as I like some creature comforts.

Finally, the book ‘Tracks’ by Robyn Davidson is about her solo walk in 1977 from the middle of Australia to the Indian Ocean with her dog and four camels. Documented by National Geographic magazine (who funded the trip) and later made into a really great movie, it’s the story of a young woman not only challenging herself and expectations of women at that time, but of facing her own fears and finding her voice. Again, not running from, but walking to. Because after that book, Robyn Davidson has become a best-selling travel writer now in her 70’s. Expectations for her back then were to settle down, marry, and basically keep her mouth shut. Because in her book she’s brutally honest about Australian society, especially in its’ god-awful treatment of Aboriginal people. And in her other books, she’s become a astute observer of people and the worlds they live in.

When I began to think about hitting the road almost ten years ago, I asked myself if I was just running from things I didn’t want to deal with. I don’t think it’s running away and just clamping your hands over your ears, or getting caught up in good food, or on a hiking trail, or trekking across a burning desert that makes you run. But in my own way, I have been on the road. Granted, I stayed in one place, the city of San Antonio, Texas and the surrounding areas but I’ve been on the road almost every day in the last seven years. And in time, my mind opened up and yes, I have dealt with and thought about a lot of things on my Uber runs. I also made a trip to and from Alabama on my own and in spring 2018 and on the road to and from there, I truly realized why the road called to me. In a way, I wished I had put more into making my dream come true back then but I didn’t have the financial means, and most of all, I couldn’t have done anything in the emotional avalanche that followed that trip in 2018.

Now when I look at the road ahead, I know I’m looking to get on it to find a space to deal with things. I’ve done that over the last eight years and now I’m at the stage where I’m writing it all down once and for all. So when I hit the road, I will be at peace like I am now, healing and recovering, and open to new sights and sounds, people and places. I don’t need the road or the trails to deal with grief, pain, or anyone’s bullshit expectations of me. Most of all, I have absolutely nothing to prove to anyone or to myself. I want to hit the road because I want to be on the move, to have my mind free to think and feel. There are stories to tell from the road and maybe I’ll settle down somewhere at some point in time. I’m open to anything and most importantly I’ll say this again, I have nothing to prove to anyone or myself, and I sure as hell won’t live to someone else’s bullshit expectations of me.

Because in a way, my book ‘Breaking Radio Silence’ has been like a journey through the wilderness, learning how to heal through from the ‘dark night of the soul’, and reaching the clear blue waters at the end of this journey. Hitting the road is not running on empty like Jackson Browne sang- it’s more like The Chicks sang about ‘Taking the Long Way’.