Of course, packing up for a weekend away makes me think of the upcoming birth we are expecting in August. I will probably pack bags, when it’s delivery time. I will probably pack bags and load them for a long time after that too.

We’re leaving in the morning to go to Johnson Shut-Ins State Park in Missouri.  I cram totes and duffels and snacks and a cooler into our truck and I am excited to be camping soon. I remember being a young kid and loving these kind of trips. I examine my choices of gear and of supplies, I remember my best friend as child, James Barkley.

We had great conversations together, walking home after school. Just a few blocks, literally over a (tiny) river and through the woods, to my Grandmother’s House we’d go. I remember talking about school, or testing out dirty cuss words, or planning out how we’d manage to get to stay that night at one or the other’s houses.

Also, I recall the exact feeling of our discussions about running away. At the time, we planned our escape riding a small four-wheeler. I remember wanting a little cargo trailer to hitch onto mine. I also spent lots and lots of time thinking about all the things I would pack into the trailer, and strap on the racks of the quad. I wanted camping stuff and food. Drinks and clothes and snacks. Probably a knife and an axe too. I wanted everything I might need for my journey, all lashed onto my go-anywhere vehicular rig.

Well, that is just about what I have, right now, sitting in my driveway. It’s not a quad-runner, but it is a 4Runner. I don’t have the trailer, but I do have plenty of room for my stuff. Speaking of stuff, I have a bunch of it; camping gear galore. I don’t have James with me, but my best friend in the world, Lindsay will be by my side. I can rest happy tonight, knowing we will ‘Run Away’, bright and early tomorrow morning.

We’ll even have our 20 week old baby on board 🙂

Packing up for a journey, makes me wonder about that little one. I wonder about the origins of life. I wonder about our souls. I question the biggest ‘hows’ that my mind can imagine. I have come across lots of different schools of thought, concerning how our lives work. Some seem sure that we pop out fresh; we have this one life and that’s it. Others seem confident that our essence has had many incarnations and repetitious spins around the carousel of life.

I know that Dr. Wayne Dyer’s words connected with me, years ago, when he marveled at the fact that we all started out as an impossibly small dot of existence. We then grow and double in size until eventually we become something amazing; a complete human being.

He illustrates that from an infinitesimally microscopic spec, the wholeness of our lives is produced. That tiny dot contains all the information needed to construct our entire being. Something thousands of times smaller than the period on this sentence was the source I came from, and you came from, and James and Lindsay and even this little new baby comes from too. Amazing. The journey, the adventure we embark upon, in this place we call the world, is compacted so simply, efficiently and elegantly.

I guess that the art of taking a trip is inherent, down to our core. Acknowledging our needs and our wants, making a plan, and setting out to see something new. It’s the kind of fun, that I habitually require. It may help explain the blueprint for our very existence: A self reliant but well-equipped adventure, forever created, ultimately and supremely by God.

Here’s to playing 12 years old again. Here’s to running away for a bit, and to coming back home, to begin again and again with the family I love.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols