My First Travels

Ashlin Dz W.

As a youth I spent my summers in the back of station wagons and old model pickup trucks with camper shells listening to my dad’s eclectic selection of music. From the endless fields of flat lands in Texas, through the countless miles of Arizona’s hot desert where the only difference between day and night were the vivid flashes of lightning that illuminated the dancing twisters visible off in the distance.

Spending those countless hours riding with my father, brother and sometime an occasional guest were timeless moments in my life. One of the very few times that the enjoyment was not in the destination but in the ride itself.

Being able to talk about everything and nothing at the same time were my fondest memories during my first road trips. Spending hours on the most minuscule questions contemplating complicated “what if scenarios.” We were on no ones time but our own making time itself wait for use or obsolete. The impressions that the great American country side left on me were photographically embedded into my memory along with audio commentary from my father’s experiences during the countries civil rights movements and his mother and father’s experience growing up during WWII and the great depression.
Nowadays my travels are on borrowed time usually loaded with must see things complicated with time frames and schedules. I still reflect on times as a youth when I was first bitten by the traveling bug. The times of my first travels as a youth where the simplest moments were timeless.