I am standing at a street corner in the predawn blue. A gas station to my right outshines the few remaining stars, and behind me the green-yellow-red rhythm regains its usefulness. We are all waking up.
Ahead, the sidewalk curves into a trail along a river, where I will see deer and rabbits and ducks, and I will keep looking to the right, past the highway to the eastern horizon, and I will be grinning.
Most runs aren’t like this.
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{Photo credit: Josh Kellogg, flickr’s creative commons}
The License Plate Game (if that be its official title) is a legend of road trips, right up there with the Alphabet Game. At least it's a legend on my road trips, as I try to catch definitive glimpses at the cars whizzing by in the opposite direction — or, if I'm lucky, at the ones creeping past me in the left lane, slow enough for me to get a good, long look at their markings without endangering anyone's life.
Years ago, I adapted the Alphabet Game for the dentist's chair. Now, I've turned the License Plate Game into a month-long adventure. How many states, I wondered, would I see in 31 days while simply living my life in the town I grew up in?
Forty states and counting.
Granted, I did go on a weekend trip to Washington, and once I drove slowly around the Bethel Church parking lot, but still. I'm amazed at how many out-of-staters I see on a regular basis. Every day I see between five and ten different states represented on the backs of cars and trucks, and not just border states (well, obviously not just border states, as California only has three of those), but some from rather far-flung locations.
Here's what I've learned as I've kept my eyes open: Adventure is all around me.
My one year of being back at home is stretching into two. The trees and mountains look the same, the streets and buildings look mostly the same. When you don't expect much, you won't see or seek out much. Over the last year, I've gotten to know people who are new to my town and excited to be here, and it's made a world of difference. There's so much I didn't know about this place and still don't know. No, I will never be able to view my town through the fresh eyes of a newcomer, but I don't have to view it as the place where dreams and adventures go to die. Because it's not that place.
No place holds that power, unless you give that power to it.
I want my life — wherever I am — to be like a License Plate Game. I want to be straining and slowing to see if there might be a hidden opportunity at that event, a potential friend in that person, unwrapped joy in that stepping out and starting something. Maybe there won't be. Maybe it will just be another California and I'll purse my lips and turn back to the road. But I will keep going, and I will keep looking, because there are more cars. There's always more. And anyway, there is a time and place for Californias, and Oregons, and Washingtons, and I can learn a lot from them.
But one day I'll just be driving along, ever-watchful and ever-present and ever-hopeful, and New York will appear and my heart will beat faster and I'll realize that this, this is what life is about. Life doesn't just happen out there on the road on set adventures. Life happens here. It's full of routines and it's full of familiarity, but it's also full of surprises and newness and unexpected blessings. It's full of people and its full of God, and that's enough.
Wherever you're doing life can be a place of adventure, if you let it.
