Here, there, everywhere: Cultural Meanderings

Amplifying inventors, eccentrics, misfits & dreamers. Here are our pitter-patterings. 

Collecting feetprints Across the American outback

Wendell Barry, a poet, cultural critic and farmer reminds us of our shared humanity. His writing is deeply rooted in a living appreciation of the land, one together we inhabit. Sometime last summer, Wendell came up in conversation with a dear friend, reflecting on the interconnectedness of people and place in America. So we made a pact---to celebrate pies, pumpernickel, and resilient communities. We greased the tires of the Playfull caravan and hit the road in search of uncovering a common fabric of our home. Bound by the commitment of a winding road and the wind at our backs, we set off across the American Outback, collecting stories on work & play.

Our journey began in New York City, revisiting the brilliant and banal of America, reminiscent of Jack Kerouac's beat nation. From the New England East, to the deep foraging South, to the mountainous West, to the coastal tips of the Pacific, we schlepped across a dozen States, two dozen cities and countless faces, conversing with our neighbors, honoring Wendell's example, asking perfect strangers out of curiosity and compassion: What is your life's work? And how do you play? Their answers, we will come to learn, are a collection of surprisingly simple, refreshing, down to earth odes to extraordinary lives and resilient spirits, as our wheels drew to a momentary pause. 

Besides it also being a more practical way to transport goods from one coast to the other, upon deeper reflection, our road trip was a way to explore a country that has housed our growing pains, helped shape our complex identities, and ignite our indomitable spirits in our endless choice in how to live each day. Our journey lunged us forwards and backwards, at times in tight car and tent quarters, sprawled across desert plains, floating our souls into the bluest of skies. There were days we let our spirits catch fire and quietly flutter into an evening of sloth-face from a long day's drive. Life is a dance and infinitely more rewarding when we practice caring for others, feet planted and free. The miles on our maps and apps were reinvigorated by geography of place. From New York to New Haven, to West Virginia and the Blue Ridge Mountains, to Beale Street and sweet tunes of Nashville, Tennessee, across Indian Reservations lining Oklahoma plains, we let ourselves be led by the scent of green chilly peppers roasting at the local farmer's market in Santa Fe. Indeed, we had journeyed through history singing Oh, Shenandoah, saluting the Rocky Mountains, laying out to bask in the warmth of Californian sun. 

Our road trip was a welcomed reminder of the brevity of our days. No matter how long or how brief our time, honoring our presence can be proof that we are powerfully connected.  The USA is a vast, glorious, behemoth of a  land mass, an astounding container for our adventures if we are open to it. At the end of the day, we're not too different from our neighbors, in our wants, hopes and aspirations. Everywhere around us people are hard at work, so that we might spend more time with those we love. Sometimes all it takes is a thousand and one mile journey across America to remind us of the poetry that lilts us forward. Besides, who among us doesn't wish to raft, reel, and log roll in earth's wonders? Whether working, retired, care-taking, or being cared for, our caravanning was less a discovery of how and what it is we do in life but why we do the things we do. It took pitstops at local gas stations, digging at quickie marts, and passages of time at dust bowl coffee shops, to finally find a shared rhythm with the tumbleweed. 

Perhaps Wendell is onto something.