The Minds Version

I find that whenever I travel, my mind is also on a trip, and often as not, we aren’t going the same direction. We will eventually meet up, but we will have different versions of the same trip.

The trip that my body took to Las Vegas involved long hours of more or less uninteresting country that was covered with snow and blowing snow the first day. The second day was much the same, but without the blowing snow. There was some very beautiful and stunning scenery for the last two or three hours, but unfortunately, even if there had been a place to pull over (there wasn’t) we just wanted to get to our hotel and relax a little. Well, as relaxed as you can be in Las Vegas.

The trip that my mind took was anything but boring, and took place somewhere between the old west and Middle Earth. I often had my head buried inside of my cloak as I rode my trusty horse “Echo” across the desolate landscape. My mind wasn’t heading to Las Vegas, but was just travelling. I travelled across badlands in the snow and found the trail that many travelers used in the past in an effort to get from there to the next place.

Echo and I rode across parched land that was poor for farming, and almost anything else. I suppose that there could be some kind of treasure hiding in the hills and crevasses, but we had no interest in that kind of thing. We were content to find a sheltered spot out of the wind to set up camp for the night and some patches of scrub grass for Echo. We would stop for a few minutes every now and then to commit the landmarks to memory in case we found the need to get back here in the future.

We would ride with our eyes to the ground, keeping track of where the safest footing happened to be. I find that the ground at your feet will often have more interesting views than that hill five miles away. We rode across ancient lava fields, past miles and miles of blowing and growing tumble weed and watched as a pack of coyotes made short work of a weak or elderly mule deer. If the rest of the herd of deer could accept the circle of life, I guess Echo and I could as well.

We rode up and down canyons that put a rainbow in our hearts. The beauty is just indescribable, and makes you want to sit for a month or two just drinking the energy of the old world in. We couldn’t stop though, we had places to go. We will certainly be back.

Its funny how that after all of the travelling, both my body and mind ended up in Las Vegas at the same time, with totally different views of the trip. I have found in the past that no matter what trials the body goes through in life, it is always the minds version of the journey that we remember.