ADVENTURE IN UNCERTAINTY — EPISODE 2: HONESTY CREATES THE OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVENTURE
Still heading left… just passed Yellowstone National Park… via New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming and now Montana. It’s taken longer than expected to get halfway from the upper right to the upper left, since my path is — when possible — not a path. The consequences have been emergent images, moments and conversations.
There’s a little town in the middle of Iowa called Storm Lake (which is — of course — on Storm Lake). It’s surrounded by hundreds of miles of corn fields. The first settlers arrived in 1856. And its name — according to one account — is born out of the loss of deep love. A Sioux maiden was forbidden by her chief to marry her beloved from another tribe. The two young lovers attempted to elope, and headed out across the lake in a canoe to ‘freedom’ on the other side. They chose adventure! But a storm upset the boat and the two were drowned (which is a real possibility in any adventure — including my own). The saddened Chief cursed the waters as the cause of his sorrow and in his grief christened the waters “Storm Lake”.
I arrived late into Storm Lake, so I went for a run in the warm summer’s evening (as is my habit when traveling, as it clears the mind, adjusts the body to the local time and offers the opportunity to explore the local environs). Whenever I run when travelling, I often set off without a direction in mind … Brownian Motion in Spandex. On this particular run, Brownian Motion took me into a small woodland park. In doing so, I suddenly found myself moving through a symphony of fireflies on the lake’s shore … like wading through physical light. Completely unexpected … seemingly impossible.
In addition to such emergent wonderment and beauty, there have also been realisations, which for me are the true value of adventure.
Early the next morning, before driving to my next destination (which turned out to be the Badlands of South Dakota), I was speaking with a young local woman working at a cafe, which, because of COVID, was only serving coffee via drive through. Though early, it was already getting hot. We spoke for 10 minutes through the opened window. I asked her what it was like to live there. She said that she loved it and had arrived from California only a few years previously, when her husband landed a job in the local meatpacking factory (where I’m told nearly everyone else in the town also works). Since arriving, she’s felt a strong sense of community. Acceptance. Seen. Not a ghost. Her family — ultimately like all of ours — hails from somewhere else. So maybe it has something to do with the fact that there are 16 different languages spoken at the local school. Yes … 16 … in a small town in the middle of Iowa. Surprising … no? Only if you assume it to be so. When we experience surprise usually — if not always — it tells you something more about your assumptions of the world than it does about the world itself.
Her expression is consistent with my own experience. Over and over … I continue to see the brain’s deepest need surface … in this instance in my travels across the US. Whether in a red state or a blue state, a farmer, a banker, a waitress … or myself … it’s common to all of us …
The need to exist.
Whether that existence is to a lover, a parent, a community, a pet … or ultimately to oneself, our cells need more than ATP (energy) and oxygen to survive.
Our cells need a reason.
Without a reason, our cells stop functioning properly (just pause and reflect on that for a moment).
Even more remarkable is that ‘the reason’ is almost always found within the ‘meaning’ of another set of cells wrapped within the context of another ‘body’. Impossible, really, when you think about it. And yet so essential. This is what I mean by finding the impossible within the everyday that creates awe and wonder, which when experienced will have dramatic consequences for our perceptions of self and the world — which the Lab of Misfits has measured in the brain.
A further realisation occurred the following day looking over the sunset that turned the moonlike landscape of the Badlands red.
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