Hours spent watching the world roll by outside the windshield. Nights spent camping on the side of the road. Breakfasts scrounged from what’s laying around. The constant stream of people entering and leaving life.
Preparing breakfast in the woods of northern Minnesota
Those who hear about people living on the road think it is a vacation, those who have lived on the road never see it that way. It’s one thing to travel with lots of money via plane, taxi, rental car, hotel suites, and posh air bnb, and that is certainly a vacation—but a road trip done the authentic way is work. 3-5 hours every day is dedicated to road travel, upon arrival at a location the cars are parked and the legs take over. All food is prepared by the members of the crew, with the greatest amenity being a camp stove. Most people’s day to day lives are much easier than this, so no, the true road trip is not a vacation, but it is one hell of an adventure.
It is this kind of adventure that we want to share with others through NaturalNatures Tours. Anyone can offer someone a nice vacation package for enough money, but we don’t want to take people on a vacation (which means the money end of things ends up being much less), we want to take them on an adventure. Vacation might bring escapism, but adventure brings discovery.
Shortly after receiving a wake-up call from local state troopers at the Marfa Lights rest stop in Texas.
What kind of discoveries, you ask? Oh, my, and with this question comes the stream of memories, memories of moments, feelings, thoughts, relationships, places, and on and on goes the list. Discovery through adventure can be attached to outward moments, but the greatest discoveries happen within. When it comes to discovering things internally, no other person can tell you what to expect, but I can tell you what I learned and discovered about myself on our road trip.
I started the road trip as a college graduate with a degree in rhetoric. After obtaining this degree I promptly discarded the idea of doing anything with it and began working full-time for the moving company that currently employed me. It was plenty of pay to live autonomously, though I found out early on that this autonomous lifestyle seemed to be harder on my body, mind, and soul then the life I had led at home or surrounded by fellow university students.
I had no idea where I wanted my life to go. When people would ask, “what do you plan to do with your degree?” I would have wrote and practiced answers, “I’d like to write,” “thinking about going into education,” “I’ll probably try to get my masters in advertising.” Occasionally I would tell the truth, “not a fucking clue.”
What I really took away from my major can be summed up in a quote from one of the original rhetoricians from Sicily, who originally began teaching rhetoric to the Greeks. His name was Gorgias, and his quote, which I still find myself occasionally meditating on, is such, “Nothing exists, if it did exist, we would not be able to comprehend it, if we could comprehend it we could not communicate it.” It seemed to be a fitting quote to encapsulate the American higher education experience, a lot of information with very little usefulness, which may or may not be all a complete lie.
Sounds like a glum place to be, and honestly it was a life that was beginning to get old. Going in to work in cold, heat, rain, snow, sleet in order to move people to new homes that were often in the same city, toting around piles of shit that most of those people never used. Working alongside guys who were willing to do this job day in and day out for shitty pay, but who then struggled with an injustice that they could not pinpoint. Then I would go home and wolf down some frozen entrée before either watching Hulu until I’d fall asleep, or (on the good nights) go out dancing and then return home late just to wake up early the next day to do it all again.
It was a loop, one that had great parts to it (especially the dancing, and I also really enjoy the feeling from manual labor and the pleasure of seeing accomplished work), but mainly it just raised a lot of “why?” questions. Why was society so shitty to its hardest workers? Why was living the way I was “supposed to” (autonomously) so detrimental to my desire to create healthy habits? Why did some people value their replaceable things more than the irreplaceable humans carrying them?
Taking a moment to relax beside Lake Mead
There would be something fulfilling to just saying that I discovered the answers to all of those questions through the adventure of the road trip, and honestly, as I look at those “why’s” now I realize, I did. But it was through a process that I came to realize the answers. It was from changing my life from sole dependence to complete and utter interdependence that I realized a single person is not meant to accomplish all things on his/her own. At the same time in order to be interdependent, one must be selfless. I learned from the people we met in all corners of the country that those questions are there underlying most thoughts. I learned that the reason those questions exist and the sole dependence lifestyle exist are because of the institutions that we have created.
While out hiking in several different forms of wilderness I came to know that Nature loves and nourishes, but at the same time challenges. There was a realization that the human body is meant to be weathered and toughened by the Earth, and that as it becomes so pain becomes less of a thing, though it is still experienced, it is not worrisome. When we went on our random rampage of trying to be stung by as many insects as we could, I found that even insects and scorpions are not naturally inclined to aggression (it always took multiple attempts to get anything to sting us).
One of our scorpion buddies who had to be coaxed to sting us.
From being with a human that I was too quick to judge for several months, I came to learn that sometimes the best of friends are the ones that are the most difficult to find the initial common ground with. I learned that we are different for a reason, and that those differences allow each of us to fully manifest the desires of our own hearts, because if we all manifest those desires together we will end up with a better world.
Why do we want to make NaturalNatures Tours? Because we want to be able to share the joys and struggles that come from living in constant contact with other humans and the natural world that supports us. We want others to reach their own personal epiphanies through the refining flames of adventure. We want people to come out of the cities and figure out that the natural world isn’t so bad after all, in fact, it is a hell of a lot better than being in a city.
There are other things that we have discussed as well, it could benefit those struggling with addiction, behavior issues, and anxiety. Ultimately those things still trace back to the basics mentioned above. Do you think it is a goal worth pursuing? If so feel free to donate to the cause today. We hope to be seeing you on the adventure side of life very soon!