Miles: 586
Pass: Chicago, Toledo, Sandusky, Cleveland
Date: 06/01/2008
"It should not be denied ... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west." -Wallace Stegner
I'm not a person of sadness nor am I a person of anger or hate. However I don't like the world around me and I don't like the way people are moving through their lives, with heads down, shutters up, and holding unfathomable resistance to change. Humans are creatures of change and as race we must come together and strive for something more than just corporal existence.
We seek to be footloose and free, yet the ultimate cost of freedom is suffering. We suffer loss, we suffer hate, we suffer greed, and for what? Freedom. No man can put a price on another mans life, nor can a person be intrinsically better than any other. In the words of Dr. King, "I ain't afraid of any man ... I have seen the promise land." Humans will always suffer, but freedom is worth any amount of anguish.
I have suffered in life, I have suffered in the west and I will continue to suffer. However without this suffering my pleasures in life would not be as great.
As if forged out of the vary granite that shapes the Great American West, my mind has become etched out of this same eternal stone. No man can tell me what to do or how to act. They will not scare me. They will not see me. I am whole, strong, and eternal. I am now a part of the American West and I will continue to change.
My journey will not end after I cross over Mississippi and travel back to the east. Time fades even the mightiest monoliths, but the mind is everlasting and words written can outlast the life of any human. My words have been written and I have shared my account. My name is Andrew and this has been a story about my journey into the American West.
“So look see the days, the endless colored ways, go play the game that you liked from the morning. And now we rise and we are everywhere. And now we rise from the ground. See she flies, she is everywhere, see she flies all around. So look see the sights, the endless summer nights, go play the games that you like for the morning.” –Nick Drake
Mount Rushmore National Monument
Yellowstone National Park
Bandlands National Park
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