This past fall I embarked on a trip around America. Not quite a trip to the gamut of Running To, but still a lovely little 3-week cross-section of the country.
It all sorta happened by accident that way, and yet accidents happen on purpose too.
Originally I’d intended only on flying out west for Albuquerque’s annual Balloon Fiesta, an otherworldly gathering of hundreds of hot air balloons (and their eccentric balloonists).
And then I learned my family would be enjoying a Charleston beach vacation the weekend prior.
And then I also learned some Minnesotan friends I’d been wanting to visit for years were free at this time.
And, well, since I’d racked up a bounty of bonus miles going back to the early days of COVID, I sent up a resounding YOLO while booking flight after flight after flight after literal flight, connecting four trips, four cities, and four seasons into one continuous, nearly monthlong adventure (packing four seasons of clothing into a single carry-on backpack, because I’ll never check a bag).
Now months removed from this trip, I look back and notice something of a correlation with both the climate of these diverse corners of America and also the climate of my soul as I encountered each one . . .
Spring: Charleston, SC
The weather is gorgeous, low seventies. I wear my 5-inch shorts and a tanktop each day.
Our stay has that classic beach-house vibe, littered with anchors and starfish and flamingo decor, and the color coral, which I kinda hate. But that view of the ocean from our balcony is worth all the damn coral.
My parents, siblings and their spouses, and my two nieces — every blessed one of them lives for the beach, and I simply do not. It’s among my greatest disconnects with my family, going back to childhood sunburns of my fair Polish skin. I could also quote one Anakin Skywalker about why I hate the sand.
Alas, sand and sunscreen grease do not send me to the same zenful place as these eight other humans in my life. I join them on the beach in the mornings before it gets hot, dipping my toes in the water and walking along the shore. After twenty minutes of toeing the tide, I’m done for the day, setting out on my own until dusk.
Walking Charleston’s streets for the first time in seven years, I remember all the trademark doors on homes that aren’t really doors — because if you walk just a few steps down the sidewalk, you’ll see that supposed “front door” actually leads to an open porch, which then leads to the actual front door of the house (or so we all think?).
Whenever I hear that joke/riddle when is a door not a door? I think of Charleston — not a jar.
All those extra doors and facades, it feels a bit convoluted. But also beautiful. Distinct.
I feel a bit convoluted. Hopefully also beautiful, distinct.
I visited Charleston twice in 2015, the first time while rounding the final leg of my 9-month road trip around North America. A trip I affectionately dubbed “Running To.”
The second time I visited Charleston, a few months after “Running To” ran out, I was “Running Away” — a cynically named sequel of a road trip wherein I viscerally felt the magic of its predecessor entirely lost. I ran away from a life in Charlotte for a couple months, feeling like a drug addict trying for another hit of the road that just wouldn’t hit.
I’ve rarely felt as lost as I did that second time in Charleston, no idea where my life was going.
I still wonder. Where it’s going.
I settle into Kudu Coffee to write one day in Charleston, passing through the doorway marked on either side with long spiral kudu horns, a deer-like animal I never knew existed until I knew of Charleston and her doors that aren’t really doors. I write some of what you’re reading now, intending to publish it as a blog by the time I leave Kudu.
Instead I “save draft,” then forget about it for months. Just like I’ve forgotten about so many other writings and projects and passions lately.
It feels like the beginning of spring, this trip: the winter having already had its way with me, burnt with frost and hardened soil. How I yearn for gorgeous weather and vistas and productivity again.
Walking back to the car, I pass all the homes with doors that aren’t really doors. I wonder with increasing anxiety the doors I show other people, doors into a facade of myself that don’t actually lead inside anywhere, don’t lead into the real me. Doors that serve to show whatever I need them to show: a quaint aesthetic, an illusion of entry when the wraparound porch wraps way the way around to some locked door you cannot yet see.
I didn’t yet cofound Your Other Brothers the last time I wandered Charleston. My name wasn’t as Google-able like it is now. I wasn’t in therapy yet, hadn’t started learning of my disintegration to two identities: the Thomas Mark and the Tom. The outside door and the inside door.
We take family pictures our last night in Charleston, all nine of us together, the three Zunigas with our parents, and then in smaller family-units, in which I have no one else to stand beside.
“Why aren’t you married, Uncle Tom?” I can just hear a niece or nephew asking me one day as we again assemble for family photos. A question that will hang in the air like a snowflake in spring.
Summer: Las Vegas, NV
Don’t worry, they say; it’s only a “dry heat.”
I depart the chaotic casino-airport in the sweltering 90’s; with no room left in my single burgeoning backpack I tie my hoodie around my waist, for I am a proud kid of the 90’s.
Later that night I decide to wear my light coat out of the hotel because I think it looks nice. But who am I trying to impress? I don’t know a soul in Vegas. I’m only stopping over for the night en route to Albuquerque. A chance to gorge my eyes on all the lights-and-building porn that is the central strip of Sin City.
I start sweating in my coat within two minutes. What is wrong with me?
“Hey, sexy!” A showgirl calls to me amid her gaggle of showgirls walking the Strip. “Want a photo?”
I so do not. But I wish I did. Wish I felt something, anything when she called me “sexy.” Wish I felt something sparking in my heart, something growing in my pants; something, anything. But there’s no sizzle, no tingle, no single flutter, even as I force myself to stare at her boobs and ass hanging out, her skin on display on a crowded city street like nowhere else in America.
I cross the street and notice a clean-shaven, chiseled jaw of a man wearing black skinny jeans, dollar bills stuffed along the rim of his Calvin Kleins. He looks my way and calls my direction, my heart leaping. “There she is! I’ve been looking for my girl all night.”
He starts walking toward me, then to some woman beside me who starts blushing, drawing her hand to her mouth as he saddles up against her, inviting her to add to the bills in his Calvins.
There’s the flutter. And the ensuing drop.
I wanna be his girl.
I continue walking the Strip, the air thick with a certain sadness of summertime; it’s my least favorite season for a reason. The days long and hot and heavy, drawing people toward beaches and bliss.
But life isn’t blissful.
Pedestrian bridges conveniently take you across either side of Vegas’s Strip, and by one such bridge sits a man (or perhaps a woman) in a shaggy, fading blue muppet suit, holding a sign that reads: “Need money for weed.”
I admire Blue Elmo’s authenticity. The shop owner across the street, however, does not, telling Blue Elmo to scram.
I walk a loop around the Strip for a couple hours that night before returning to my hotel. I feel lonely, I feel invisible.
I’ve been to Las Vegas four times now, and every time I go to bed sad.
Autumn: Albuquerque, NM
I put that light coat to use. The mornings hit me with a chill I haven’t felt in many months.
I’ve been wanting to see these damn balloons for years now. I finally reach the point when my bucket of a list can feel even one droplet lighter. My friend and I wake up at 4:30, the sky still black, and as we get trapped in 5am traffic we look left and see the first fires of a dozen balloons lighting upward like lanterns to paradise.
As daylight breaks, these balloons take over the heavens like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like planet Earth being invaded by an army of awe. An armageddon of dippin’ dots.
Hundreds of balloons take to the skies over the next couple hours, and they simply drift with only the breeze and a flame before touching down . . . somewhere. The balloonists in the baskets actually have no idea where they’ll end their journey. Ideally somewhere flat and barren, and not a building or a street. I suppose New Mexico is great for barren. You couldn’t hold the Balloon Fiesta in Manhattan.
They ascend, they drift, and they descend. And then they get rescued by their loved ones chasing them in pickup trucks.
I’ve ascended in this life. Have taken off multiple times from multiple places, it seems. I’ve certainly done my share of drifting. But what of the descent?
Where will I land in this life? Will the landing be soft in the desert, or will it be a fiery balloon on the interstate?
Who will eye me in the skies, chase me down, rescue me from the fallen basket?
When the autumn of this life descends, my body and heart and soul feeling this thing really winding down, where will I wind up?
Winter: Minneapolis, MN
Not only do I need the light coat, I also need the flannel and the undershirts and any gloves or hats my friends can lend me. I visit them at their new house, a cozy respite in the cold.
We walk the grounds of their old university, intercepting paths they once walked, reliving a treasure map of landmarks that first formed their friendship. We stop at a prayer chapel in the middle of campus, and my friend asks me: “How can we pray for you, Tom?”
I look up at the cross and sigh. Truly, I could rattle off a thousand areas where my life feels lacking. Health. Finances. A vehicle. A home. Time. A passion to write again. Things that were true then and remain true now.
An old friend once posted a viral video as he wondered why anyone prays. Why pray to a God who already has his mind made up? Or does he? And if we can “change his mind,” what does that even mean??
I feel my old friend’s tension. Have been praying for things for years with no response, no resolution, no seeming way forward. I wonder if it’s worth praying for anymore, and often I stop. But then I start again. My prayers for the impossible pushing like a plant through another inch of snowfall.
I wonder if God knows how to write the one missing chapter of redemption into my story or if he’s still making it up as he goes along.
Life feels like winter in these times. Endless, bleak, not so much black or gray as blinding white. Bleached and strained.
Despite these chilly Minnesota nights, my friends take me to an amusement park, another landmark of joy for them. With a gulp and a borrowed beanie, I pop some Dramamine and saddle up. We start slow with some baby coasters, and I already feel my brain spinning, my insides churning. My body just doesn’t last long with amusement parks.
“The merry-go-round is the worst ride of all,” I tell my friends plainly. I won’t be getting on that infernal ride.
My friends’ favorite coaster, “Wild Thing,” has the biggest drop in the park, and for half a second I debate entering the queue with them. But my feet keep kicking forward, and I find myself being strapped into the seat beside my friend before I can allow my dizzied brain a say.
Before the ride begins, my friend tells me he’ll be going down the opening 207-foot drop with both arms raised. “I used to be afraid,” he tells me, “but I learned to surrender to the ride. It has you.”
The click-click-click upward truly is the worst part of it or any ride. Not the 20-story drop or any of the raging twists and turns to come. It’s the existential questioning: why in God’s name am I here right now? Of literally all the coordinates on the planet, I find myself sitting on a ride click-click-clicking toward a gorgeous view of Minnesotan tree lines, a budding beauty paired with budding doom.
Maybe even in deep winter God has me. Has us all firmly in his grasp.
I turn to my friend as we reach the crest, and he raises his arms with a smile; for maybe a full second, I lift both of mine from the bar — then quickly grab hold as 74 mph consumes me.
This is life, the ups and downs personified: the slow and steady, the escalating anxiety; the rush, the descent, the wild swings left and right; the slowing once again; the rest; the smiles; the uproarious laughter; the dizzy dizzzzzzzies.
The hot and the cold and the something in between; the things being born and the things being killed and killed.
Spring Again?
After four cities and four seasons across nearly four weeks, I actually consider connecting this trip with yet another location as the Philadelphia Phillies forge their first playoff run in 11 years. Do I dare fly to Philly now — there’s hardly any time to decide — and punch a ticket to my first-ever playoff game? How wild would that be? How new, how exciting, how fresh like the first dusting of pollen —
Perhaps feeling as old as I’ve ever felt, feeling something of a slight descent from the heavens, I tell myself something that makes my nomadic soul both faint and smile, if ever so slightly:
I’m going home.
