Unlikely Nomads

“I bet I can find my way back without help this time…”

I was wrong. Again. After meandering around for a while through random streets and hunting for road names that sounded familiar, I heard the voice in the back of my head remind me that I was wasting gas and time. So I pulled up the maps on my phone and found my way home. At the same time, though, I had been successful. On one of my street turns, I found a comic book shop that convinced me to go inside and wander the aisles a bit. I definitely will be back.

You see, when I’m not pressed for time, and when no one is in my car to convince me otherwise, I like to challenge myself with the task of driving back on my own. And it’s true that I want to get there without help. But there’s also a part of me that loves getting lost. Just a little bit. Because, I know that I’m going to find something new. 

There are the farmer’s markets. And the quiet neighborhoods. And the coffee spots. But it would be too romantic to expect that aesthetic everywhere. More often, it’s the ordinary things that I appreciate from the driver’s seat as I drive by. Abandoned warehouses. Tucked-away laundromats. Patches of woods. Fancy houses. Tiny houses. Old churches. The subtle things. It’s surprising how much there is to notice. 

I enjoy wandering. Some people may find it aimless, but what if the aim is knowing that the temporary unknown is about to give you something?

My mom had one rule for me as a kid, when I explored the woods behind my house. “If you can’t see the house anymore, then you’ve gone too far.”

Before you imagine me venturing into the deep forest as a small child, I should explain that these woods were merely tree lines that separated corn fields in rural Illinois. A drainage creek ran through the trees, offering enough variety in rocks, water, fallen branches, and mud that any kid would want. My dad had asked the local land owners if they cared that we explored. And as long as it wasn’t hunting season, the woods were ours to happily roam. Luckily for me, the tree lines weren’t that thick—I could peer through the gaps between branches and still see a small patch of the white siding two cornfields away. 

In my wanderings, the fallen trees were my favorite because they changed shapes. What once stood tall and outstretched above the ground suddenly morphed into a different beast when it was sprawled out upon the earth. Each one was unique. The trunks became bridges to walk upon. The unearthed roots became ladders to climb. While the life of this tree was over, its story was not. I had found a brand new adventure to explore. 

When I fly home for Christmas,
there’s a place I have to visit.

It’s an old antique store on Main Street, where local vendors fit all of their finds inside two-stories of space. When you first walk through the door, a small bell sounds your arrival, and you are met with the smell of aged wood and the sight of a wide expanse of stuff — so much stuff to look through. 

Camping equipment from the ’50s. Figurines from the ’70s. Glassware from the ’80s. Tools from who-knows-when. China. Pottery. Vinyl Records. Books. 

It’s a good thing I fly home. My carry-on can only fit so much. The books, though — now those are my favorite. I don’t buy them and I don’t read through them. But I do leaf through the pages, looking at the pictures and pencil scribbles, and skimming the chapter titles. I then hunt for the publication date. Each time I visit, I try to find the oldest book in the shop. So far, I’ve found books from the mid-1800s. And there, on the second floor, alone and surrounded by things, I just think.

Someone owned this. Who were they? How did it end here? They had no idea what was coming in the 1900s. What were they like? Were they funny or were they quiet? What were they afraid of? 

But then the books go back on the shelf. I will poke around for an hour or so before making my way down to the front desk. The store owner punches out the cost on a calculator, takes my cash, and hands me my newest find in a brown paper bag. And then I say goodbye. But I’ll be back the next year to pore over it all again. 

New things are born every day.
But old things can be found every day too.

With old things comes stories. And when you enter the pages of a century old novel or stumble upon a corner of town you’ve never noticed before, then you are in that story too. And as with being in any story, you now have something new to share.

Today you should make time to wander somewhere. I know, I know— we are safe, responsible adults with schedules and efficiency. (And for all those doubting my sensibility, may I also encourage carrying pepper spray, exploring with friends in the daytime, and not trespassing.) 

But even in our daily rhythms, I would advocate for some syncopation. Maybe we’ve forgotten how much we need it. And it’s ok if we don’t always know the significance right away of the stories we step into.

I won’t promise what you’ll find. Or tell you what to do when you discover it. Or how it will change you. But that’s the point of it all — we don’t know…. yet.

So, 

are you curious enough? 

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Drawn to Life

It’s one of my earliest memories and a frustrating one as well. I remember as a four-year-old, walking with my mother in a department store one particular day. A small figurine for sale caught my attention and I found it beautiful. But I was penniless at that age, and my mother was understandably more concerned with other important things to buy. I was determined, however, that if I couldn’t own this small treasure, I would draw it. And therefore preserve its beauty forever. Back home at my desk, I set out to accomplish this. After a short while, I abandoned my pencil and paper. I don’t remember the moment I learned to draw but I do remember the days when I couldn’t. This day happened to be one of those. I was so disappointed that the memory had to stay hidden in my head, invisible to my pencil and paper. Drawing seemed impossible. It seemed like magic. And I did not possess the powers yet.

The wish for the magic

Have you ever seen something incredibly beautiful and then wanted so badly to be a part of it? I used to sit cross-legged between the bookshelves in the library, looking through colorful children’s books and wishing so hard that I could jump right into the page. A following wish? To make the page myself. In her many seasons, life has an array of beauty to it. But It’s more than what we see. It’s also filled with what we hope for, what we feel, and what we remember. These invisible things can all find their way to the surface when our hand connects to a pencil and then connects to the paper. The master artist, Andrew Loomis, described the process as “vision on paper.”  But exactly how does expressing this vision happen? “Magic, of course”, we tell ourselves. And so we begin.

The effort of an illusion

But the sooner we dig into practicing and learning, the sooner we realize that we are not magicians. That first struggle as a four-year-old was only a precedent for many more hours of hard work to create beauty. Thankfully, with good teaching and effective practice, enough progress lights the path and persuades us to keep going. But the path doesn’t always get easier. Just when I thought I had crossed into the world of making decent drawings, I went to college. There, I sat in classes that discussed design, anatomy, perspective, and form, and realized there was far, far more to learn. Drawing, my teachers explained, involved creating an illusion of a 3-dimensional object on a 2-dimensional surface. An illusion. I could relate to that. At times, drawing looked harder than it actually was. Other times, it gave the illusion of being easier.

And over time, my understanding of the drawing process deepened. I too learned how to create these 3-dimensional illusions. Someone might see the many class hours, filled sketchbooks, and completed projects and assume the goal is learning how to create what we love and to make it look deceptively effortless. And they would be right. But not entirely. Something else is actually happening here as well. 

The reward for the journey

Each attempt is a step, and those add up after a while. They become a journey. And while our destination may be to reach a certain skill, there’s also a second reward taking shape. Our endeavors may not always take a straight path. In fact, they may remind us of our crooked, first attempts at creating a line on paper. But the pencil moved after all, and so do we. When we see beauty and strive to recreate it, we build sensitivity. We build resilience. We build excellence. These small seeds take root and grow into a meaningful perspective of life. It changes us. And when we grasp a deeper honesty of the world, in all of her glory and struggle, we feel an incredible desire to express it. This changes others. It’s an amazing, never-ending process. We aren’t magical creatures (sorry to remind you again), but the process of growth is full of wonder. So, if the memory needs to be preserved, if the feeling wants to be expressed, and if the idea begs to be constructed, then return to that pencil and paper and try again. And wherever this journey takes you, I am sure that the world will see things once invisible and hidden inside of you drawn to life. 

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Mentioned in this article:
Loomis, Andrew, Successful Drawing (London: Chapman and Hall, 1952) pg.4.

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