The road has led me back to the Blue Ridge. Back in these hills rolling like moonlit shadows, just like I remember, just like always.
I’ve been gone from this place for 82 days. Traveling as far away as Colorado and Maine and losing a grandfather along the way.
And the way is still unfolding before me.
I’m staying in downtown Asheville at a hostel this week, an establishment I’ve walked past dozens of times but never entered, never had a need to enter in the three years I’ve called this city home.
It’s a fitting dichotomy: homeward bound yet out of place, unsettled, a visitor of sorts.
I intend to relocate back in this city. To re-live here once more.
I’m not necessarily excited for Asheville 2.0.
But I’m not necessarily anti-Asheville either.
I’m fortunate to have a lot of flexibility in my life. The work I do with YOB can be done anywhere. I could live anywhere. I could live in grander places. I could live in cheaper places. I could live in closer proximity to other great places with other amazing people.
But I couldn’t live in a prettier, more familiar place than Asheville.
God speaks to me in promptings, especially when I write, especially when I’m by myself, especially in nature, especially on the road, and especially when all those ingredients converge.
And right now, even though nothing is in place, even though I have nowhere to live, I feel God prompting me back to this city I’ve called the Jewel. To call the Jewel home for at least two more years. It’d round up my time in Asheville to five years, and this feels like a nice round number for the next checkpoint, the next chapter.
Thing is, I don’t yet know how this chapter is happening. Technically, I’m still wandering, still on my summer road trip as I stay in yet another hostel, even though I’m staying only 1.5 miles away from what’s written on my driver’s license.
I’ve almost closed the circle, looping out to Colorado and Maine and back.
Almost, but not quite.
I remember all these streets and all these coffee shops and all the memories up and down and scattered about this city, and yet the canvas is also curiously blank, ready for new experiences and new chapters. Old ones bleeding like ink from the pages prior.
I’m antsy to get resettled. To cart my belongings out of storage. To arrange my dwelling space. To host friends and strangers again. To write and invest in this city.
But for now, I’m a stranger in a familiar land. I’m making the rounds and waiting and feeling. None of it feels fun. It mostly feels really uncomfortable. Feels like outgrown clothing.
Have I outgrown the clothing or has the city outgrown me?
Or perhaps a little of both after 82 days?
I’m aiming to lean into the discomfort right now. Leaning in hopes of finding sturdy ground.
Leaning in hopes of growing into the next new thing this city needs me to be.
