the hardest drive

3.7 miles. Nothing compared to the 300- and 400-mile days I drove all over New Mexico. But this morning I took what I honestly think was the hardest drive of my life—the brief journey back to a job I just can't get excited to return to. Tears filled my eyes as soon as I turned off my street and onto the main road through town. After flipping from radio station to radio station, I switched to a CD by a band, Dehlia Low, that, along with The Be Good Tanyas, sang the soundtrack to my southwestern journey. I thought hearing that music would bolster my energy; all it did was bring my heart down. Driving from one side of MP to the other does not an expedition make. Returning to a job that offers me the same experiences month in and month out leads to nothing like adventure. There would be no flutters of awe in my heart on this day—just the hum drum feeling of doing the same thing over again for the thousandth (literally) time.

I drove home listening to track 5 -- a song called "Ravens and Crows." Got out of the car, came into the house, scrolled through my iphone camera until I found some of the videos I made driving New Mexico highways with the phone held up to the window and Dehlia Low playing in the car. Picked back up in the same song and listened as I watched the ramshackle houses and barren boughs of winter trees sweep past my car window. As I watched mountains rise and fall back into broad valleys. As I felt my heart at once vacant and whole.

I might just move there one day!