One year ago, i bedded down in Casa Sorcha (my prius) for the first time. i have since spent 244 nights in my car, on and off, happy as a wallowing buffalo.

The majority of those 121 days indoors were gifts for which i strove to do my part by making meals, cleaning up, baking bread, stoking laughter, and later, sending postcards.

The nights out of doors have been at no cost! Except one: a cute homemade lot in Cuba, New Mexico, where they played sweet tunes, made delicious coffee, and had strong wifi. A ten-spot well spent!

i have made and lost a myriad of new acquaintances, leaned into the ebb and flow of old friendships, made deeper commitments to family, even taken a lover or two.

People like to ask what my favorite part of this adventure has been. i haven’t yet given an answer i like, mostly because how the fork does one compare the hushed awe of an old growth forest to the brilliant history of a canyon, or the rocky nonsense of coastal cliffs to the grandeur of whole mountain ranges? There is simply no rubric for the marvelous! i have been responding to the question mostly by telling animal stories: buffalo sparring, that one songbird swimming, surprise zebras canoodling, deer playing tag, elk with their morning bugling, prairie dogs standing to whistle, trout heading upstream, hummingbirds zipping through their mating dives, nomads showing up for their communities… you know, animal stuff. Now, my 366th day on the road, i’m ready to share a real triumph. It is one i come to largely because of the safety of my white skin; i cannot stress enough my daily gratitude for this privilege.

Somewhere in the depths of COVID isolation i realized that i hadn’t traveled my home country. i had been places, but not seen much. i felt much more comfortable as a lone traveler abroad than i ever felt in the US. All my life i have only known American culture as that of vicious, self-serving bullies. Indeed, the media and government seem eager to tell this tale with reliable consistency. Other than that presentation and my lived experience that completely reinforced it, i hadn’t acquainted myself with the culture and people of the United States.

When i finally looked around with my adventurer’s eyes, it was the darnedest thing.

Like warm bedding becoming less comfortable as the sun rises in the desert, i slowly shed my anger and fear. i had been cozily ensconced in terrified rage for years. i had to make myself uncomfortable in it, sweat it out. i attempted to meet strangers, approaching them with the same respect i’d offer any foreign local as an outsider. i worked hard to offer the benefit of the doubt in generous, even American, portions. Turns out it’s actually really easy to talk to people if you don’t start by assuming they’re stupid. i allowed folks their own truths, and i discovered that most people, even if they suck, are doing their level best. They suck for so many myriad reasons, most of which are circumstantial. Ultimately though, nobody gets anywhere when we’re all just screaming into the void and ranting in our echo chambers.

This experience would have been heartily different were i not white-presenting. i do not know what it’s like to have melanated skin, and i fully understand that my freedom of movement around this country relies on my whiteness. i simply no longer feel the need to cancel every member of every demographic that scares me.* Encouraged by a regular lack of wifi connection, i quit social media and stopped paying attention to the news. Eventually i found myself, gratefully, disinclined to talk shit about people i haven’t met.

i was furious at my fellow Americans for a long, long time. i am done now. We do suck, collectively, but i forgive us individually.

Each and every human is equally deserving. All the way up until they show me otherwise.

In this year on the road i came across plenty of outright bigots. Very few of them were where, or whom, one might expect. The majority of them were accidentally bigoted, rather than dedicated to a hatred. i helped some of them–thereby hopefully all of us–by tactfully asserting my own truths in turn. i have even been approached by several discrete, ignorant but respectful people who’d decided i was a safe weirdo from whom to seek information about the marginalized. (Ask me sometime about the Trump voters who didn’t understand why their kid wants to be a “they”. It was amazing, honestly.) i witnessed three physical fights, none of which were about anything i’ve discussed here (two of which involved guns, however). And not once, not at all did i feel threatened. By anyone. Please read that again, keeping in mind my initial racial caveat, but also that i present female and am nearly always completely alone. In wildernesses, cities, red states, blue states, campgrounds, countrysides, coasts, deserts, on hiking trails, unceded territories and public lands: i was not once in danger due to another human, except of inevitable heartbreak.

Tl;dr: for as much as we all hate each other in our homes and online, there’s not a lot of it in real life. The best aspect of my year was learning this truth, leaving the internet enclave, and letting go of my ire, all so that i could be kind to strangers, and maybe even sway some opinions once in a while. Boots on the ground, community first. i’m not proud to be an American, but i am proud to be your neighbor.

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Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Mark Twain

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*with one predictable exception: ACAB.