Thank you...

... warm wind, the last bits of a nice days sunlight, carrots and Sophie. You turned a filthy gas station parking lot into Walden Pond. Good bye, quiet desperation (you will return later, I'm sure.) Goodbye, rushing to get somewhere else. Hello, right now. Nice to meet you. Who knew you were so likable.

In Walden, Thoreau said he went to the woods because he wanted to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." He said he wanted to "drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world."

I propose that he could have done that in one 12 hour drive to California. No need to live for 2 years on nothing. No need to gather wood and maintain a shack by the pond. No need to count ants. You want to see the bare bones brutal truth of life? Stick a 2 year old and a 4 year old in a car for 12 hours. Tie those "no we will never stop moving" children to one spot and tell them to sit there and be entertained by the barren, lifeless landscape that connects Utah to California. Feed them high fat, high sugar foods. Feed yourself the same. Or starve yourself. There is no other practical choice.

My book about my drive to California would have been a little less transcendental than Walden in its philosophy. This not to say that the drive was miserable. There was really no fighting or yelling. It just felt uncomfortable and meaningless. It felt like the thing I had to do to get to what I wanted to do.

But then, in "not meant to be on a postcard" Jean, Nevada, Ashely dug Parker out of the pile of crackers and crayons that he was hiding under and carried him into the bathroom. Sophie, who had been begging for liberation for some time, accepted that she would not be allowed to "go see if the gas station sells barbies," or "go get a treat," even if she promised to be "way, way good." So she grabbed a bag of carrots and hopped on the back of the truck with me.

Then, the warm wind came, and Sophie's hair started to blow in her face, and she started laughing. The sun was about to set. It was warm and quiet. I could see Ashley through the gas station window, holding Parker in her arms while she paid for a diet coke.

And suddenly, I was sitting on the back of a truck, eating carrots, in the middle of everything I ever wanted.

Tomorrow one of us will write about the destination. California is beautiful. Disney was fun. There will be pictures. If Sophie leans to spell by then there will be a lot of stuff about Snow White, (actual quote, "dad, i fink now Snow White is my way way best friend.")

I'm writing about the trip. If life, when I strip it all the way down, is more about my little group of four trying to get somewhere than it is about getting there, that's fine with me. I just like being with them.

I seem to kick up a lot of dirt chasing after life. It moves so fast, and I get tired so easily. So thank you Jean, Nevada. Thanks to all those moments of clarity when it seems worth it. For that pause in the chase when the beast stops and looks back at me. And I can catch my breath and really see it.

And it's beautiful.