My Car: A Lesson in Impermanence

Allow me to introduce you to the Urban Merchant.....

I started this trip envisioning it all by bus. Ah, the romance in the sweat and struggle of nights spent on the Greyhound station floor, waiting for that 2am bus we're all not sure is coming, that certain special customer eying you throughout the trip, his glance on the vacant seat next to you...that and your collarbone.

Besides my own safety, the main reason I decided to liberate the Urban Merchant from her grassy knoll in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was my desire to farm and camp my way across the south. I want to be connected to the land I'm loving. And after awhile, I just didn't want to give my money to Greyhound anymore. I may be in solidarity with the people I love in traveling this way, but this is the same company that keeps people waiting hours without information and doesn't usually chase la Migra away from arrival points, even after customers have paid for the ride.

Now, don't think I've sold out. My car, beautiful as she may be, is truly only a step above the Greyhound. For one, she has managed to attach herself to every insect that likes to travel and in doing so, keeps me very close to nature. (Sorry, Grandma, you're not going to appreciate this story very much...) I've been blessed that the ants my car is infested with do not actually bite, but I was not so keen to acknowledge while at a rest stop one day that I had a black widow who had taken a flat just below the engine. Much as I believe in fair housing (especially for single parents!), I had to evict her right then and there. And every once in awhile I turn off the engine to the tune of the gentle fluttering of a moth's wings from the back seat.

The Merchant likes to graze among the bounty of southbound trucks, straddling 60 mph as she plods along. So the other day, while pushing the limit to perhaps 62, I glanced over to my left and nearly turned off the road. This huge, brown spider was waving its legs, just hanging out on the window. Um, I'm not actually afraid of spiders, but I have total respect for their poisonous bites. So there I am on the highway- the wind in my hair, the ants crawling on my legs, and the spider who now lives in the vent, waving as the cars go by. If I so much as see one Palmetto, that's it. I mean, this is ridiculous!

Every time I enter my car I acknowledge that tomorrow she may not work. And honestly, I try to feel blessed with the lesson this holds for me in my life outside of her musty interior. I am a woman traveling alone across the south, navigating new boundaries about my own safety. I have to trust myself, trust that I am prepared if tomorrow my car stops working, my money runs out, I run into trouble. I cannot take myself for granted, because I am the only one I have at the end of the day. I chortle down the highway, making plans should she fail me, letting go... We are in this journey together for as far as it lets us, and then I may need to let her go.

I am blessed time and again with this message of life's impermanence, and the critical friendship I want to cultivate with myself. The road moves, warps, curves, shapes the next day. I follow with an open heart, ready for potholes.