Being of Sound Mind and Body on an Autumn’s Evening

Today I am of sound mind and body.

Full of sound in my mind, that is.

Eloquent curtails of boredom dance steadily so as this last evening before returning to our life in the Airstream ensues. An aluminum can of adequate proportions to aid our jettison down the road, it tends to hold one in awe and reality simultaneously. I’m well aware of our abilities. Thus far in this slender minimal caravan we’ve managed six months or so on the road, two to four otherwise, rinse yourself of another situation, repeat. A season just shy of two years this way, of our six on the road all told. And I don’t mind it one bit.

The leaves overhead and crumpling beneath boots, puddlejumping river shoes and bare feet alike make it clear. Times, well they are a-changin’ as a-usual and with the intrepid nature of tomorrow and the coming weeks of easing our family full throttle back into road life, I just sit here looking it all over.

The boys room, two single beds a thin hallway across from one another. A dry erase marker map hangs, several badges of the National Park variety on each of their window drapes.

A bathroom, tucked deep back behind it all, a new toilet, completely new plumbing right down to the sewer pipes that exhausts our daily waste.

A kitchen stocked minimally but with working sink, a new propane fridge, a new water pump, adequately cute chevron curtains.

The living area with resurrected couch bed and a breakfast nook where once lived a rickety morning’s table worth of yogurt everywhere.

And so my mind grows peaceful looking it all over. A bit content, ironically I guess, at how the movement tomorrow will just be another on down the trail. At how we’ll shed our summer ways and have a sort of new year’s chance at getting whole, being good to one another as best or much we can.

Young children will still inevitably bicker over shared toys. Newfound teenage sons will go temperamental and annoy their elders with too much time spent in the digital world. We’ll hike and travel back roads and get elbows deep in the closest restaurant’s ketchup at times. The adults will find their frustration at times a burden.

Squabbling will prove an understatement.

And at the same time our bodies will go limber, flexed, feeling the action of every day. The young and the younger will find the outdoors their best option. Time outs will be avoided by time outdoors. Some of us will complain about this trail or that museum, and some of us again will come out laughing, talking it all over.

Our minds will face travail, our bodies natural sustenance. We’ll hopefully learn to mold through one another’s growing pains as we all learn to become partners, lovers with children, mothers of sons and fathers remembering, not just imposing discipline.

From here on out it’s a motion south, zig zag as it may be, and by the time I think of this evening spent alone on the Airstream again we may be six months further into some desert southwest new way of being.

So tonight I’m just sitting here, alone, a warm beer and looking over our little domain with a truly perplexing and happy smile.