The idea

The open road has been the subject of many songs, stories and photographs and it's been the backdrop of countless Hollywood movies. 'The Road' weaves its way through the fabric of our culture as surely as it winds its way through the geography of our nations. When I was an illustration student at Sheridan College, I dreamt about writing and illustrating a book exploring life on the road. More than a few miles have rolled by since then and I never made that book. I'm working on a new project now called "Arabah." In many ways it's a pursuit of the same dream. It would appear the idea didn't quite die by the side of the road. It's more like it took a bit of a detour.

My earliest experience of the now mythical ”American Road Trip” was a cross-continent trip my sister and I took with our parents in the summer of 1987. As I watched the ever changing landscape roll by the open window of my dad’s Chevy Suburban, I couldn’t have known then that I was falling in love.

It was the west in particular that stole my heart. Those vast and lonely vistas punctuated by little tumbleweed towns reminiscent of something in an Edward hopper painting.

My 12-year-old self wouldn’t have understood then that I wasn’t just driving through another dot marked on a map somewhere. I would not have recognized this landscape as the setting for an ever-unfolding drama of a colourful cast of characters; Naive youths searching for themselves, traveling salesmen shucking the latest modern convenience, and unsavoury cons, aimless drifters, bikers, hippies, poets, and songwriters all coming and going while a few hardscrabble folks remain in place, clinging to a dream that has long blown out of town on a hot desert wind.

Watching yet another town disappear in the rearview mirror, I wouldn’t have known about introversion and extroversion and how quiet lonely places call to the more introspective among us.

At the time, I wouldn’t have connected the abandoned and decaying roadside artifacts with the words of Jesus as he warned against the storing up of treasures here on earth where moth and rust destroy.

I wouldn’t have been aware of any of this.

John Steinbeck wrote “‘the roadtrip’ is the antidote to the professional sick man.”

I now realize the road will only take you so far. We will need to leave the road at some point, park at a trailhead and hike. Get lost. The road to the 'promised land' will [necessarily] take you through the desert. On foot.

I had set out to write a book about the road, but like any good road trip, my journey got detoured and delayed.

At one point, I drifted off course and eventually found myself in a desert of sorts, drifting aimlessly and seemingly lost. But not all who wander are lost. And not all wandering is a waste of time. God’s own chosen people were led through such a place and not without purpose.

The Arabah project is now shaping up to be a book about the need to experience desolate places and discovering beauty and meaning in those arid, seasons of wandering and wondering. The dream has expanded to include a collection of fine art, a public exhibit, a coffee table art book, a film and maybe some other products.

I invite you to tag along on this creative adventure and see where this goes.