“Take me somewhere I can breathe,” the soul said.
After being immersed in a whirlwind of sirens, concrete walls, steel boxes and blackened asphalt for so long, the soul craved an escape, a reconnection with the most basic and most essential – nature. And so a road trip deemed itself necessary to satiate this yearning for the wild, the damp earth, the yellowing leaves, the brittle branches, and mostly, the silence and solitude.
This was last weekend, where I found myself bundled up in a car with three others, headed towards Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania. Not exactly the first location that comes to mind when someone says “road trip,” Ohiopyle not only boasts rugged landscape with canyons and waterfalls but it also hosts one of the most famous architectural wonders that I had come across countless times in art classes and more. It happens to house Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see it. From admiring it only in textbooks to standing in front of it (and touring the interior!), it was as surreal as it could have been.
The rest of the weekend involved getting lost in the woods, trekking along the Youghiogheny River, and managing without outdoor cell reception. Most of all, it enabled reveling in utter silence. The soul renewed its love for the wilderness but it also triggered an insatiable hunger for more adventures. It continues to seek reconnection of body with mind, away from chatter, eyes, judgment and expectations.
