The Road To The Middle Of Nowhere--Ever Been There?

In a paper grocery sack I keep a huge pile of old photos. Some are good. Most are bad. I have a huge assortment of "road" pictures. And by that, I mean, pictures of the road. For some reason, I have always been inspired to get a snapshot of where I am at, when I am nowhere, and on my way to somewhere. Nowhere seems to hold a relevance and a spell over my life. I have had this need to capture nowhere quite often, as these pictures attest to.

I think it was Paul Newman who said-- "I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere, than anywhere else on earth". If it wasn't Paul, it was someone else equally cool.

I agree.

I've slept in the middle of nowhere quite often. Toss a tarp. Roll out a swag. Bundle a jacket for a pillow.

In the middle of nowhere, the stars are at their finest. You can't get better stars anywhere else. Nowhere is where it is at when it comes to stars.

And then there is the sound of silence.

Ever hear it?

Most of us think that the humm that surrounds us is silence. The distant freeway. The power transformers. The muted music. The hushed voices.

Not so.

In the middle of nowhere, silence is really really quiet. I'm not kidding. You can actually hear your liver function-- it's that quiet.

OK. Maybe that is an exaggeration. But you can hear the legs of a beatle, clattering across a piece of cardboard. I've heard it. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but I have heard those legs, scratching and tapping their ambulatory way across a U-haul written in black.

As I tend to come from somewhere, just like most of us.

If there was a story in these collective pictures, it would be this. In my life, the moments I have found to be the most significant and gratifying, have been the points in between the dots.

And I've got the pictures to prove it...