I’m home from the road. I especially missed my better half during my time out on America’s highways. There were those times when I just wanted to share whatever I was seeing or experiencing along the way with Mary. Social media is great. Texts and phone calls allow you to remain in-touch. But looking into the eyes of that special someone is something you can only do face-to-face.

Back issues have been a semi-regular affliction in my life. No matter how diligent I might be about exercise and taking care of myself, I can bend down and my back will suddenly “go out.” It doesn’t happen all the time, but enough so that it’s become an annoyance.

My method for dealing with ongoing back situations has been to keep a skilled Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.) on speed dial. I first discovered the benefits of osteopathic manipulation under the care of Dr. David Johnson. Back then (1987), his practice was in Yarmouth. He was always overbooked, and I learned to bring a something to read and get used to waiting 45 minutes (if not longer) beyond my appointment time. The relief he provided was always worth the wait. He left for a sabbatical and I needed to find another D.O. Fortunately, I learned about Dr. Louis Hanson in Cumberland. I was with him for 25 years, even after he closed his practice due the demands of the 21^st century medical model, and joined a practice group. I was devastated when he died in a plane crash, pursuing his passion of flying single-engine aircraft. Finding a new D.O. became challenging.

A mere two days prior to leaving on my road trip, I managed to tweak my back. Murphy’s Law, right? For the week I was driving, getting out of the car after a long stretch of driving yielded excruciating pain when I unfolded my body and first stood up. My first few steps across the rest area parking lot were taken stiffly and painfully, and then, the discomfort would dissipate somewhat. Then, after moving around a bit, I was back in the car only to repeat this chain of events again, over and over throughout my 2,000+ mile journey.

Numerous times at various stops along the way, the thought crossed my mind: “why am I doing this?” Was there something necessary about me driving to points on a map hundreds of miles from home?

Life affords all of us choices—options so to speak. We get to decide just how much (or how little) we want to engage with our world, other people, and places that aren’t part of our familiar orbit.

Since Mark was killed, I’ve pondered about why the road kept beckoning him back. Of course, there were his two walks. But before walking, he’d hitchhiked across America with Owen, his high school friend. This was done the summer after the two of them graduated from college. Apparently they’d made a pact of sorts in high school to do this at an appointed time.

Then, Mark drove across the country with his girlfriend, Gabi. They ended up in Los Angeles where the two of them lived until Mark returned to the East Coast after being accepted into Brown’s MFA program in Literary Arts in 2009.

If you’ve been following Mark’s story for any length of time, or read one of the many articles about his life, like this one, the best of many, you know that he’d trekked across the U.S. in 2010, doing it in 81 days. That walk was epic in a different manner than his final walk.

That vision quest got his parents off the couch in Durham, and into Miss Mary’s RAV 4, with us driving to Texas for a Baumer family reunion in Stillwater, Texas in July of 2010. We ended up being out on the road for two weeks that time.  Mark gave us a gift, teaching us that it’s okay to embrace the unknown and the slightly different.

In 2015, Mark hatched a plan to hitchhike to Los Angeles that fall for AWP. He didn’t have much success scoring rides, so he had to abandon the randomness of standing on the side of the road and flagging down a driver or he’d never made it to the conference in time.

We all know now that he was called out again in 2016 for what would be his final journey. The unknown beckons to all of us. Some hear the call—most however, don’t, or refuse to heed it.

I am no longer a believer in the supernatural or the metaphysical. My four years in fundamentalism and the lack of anything remotely resembling Jesus among believers burned away the fantasy that religion made a difference in the world.

Yet, while I was out on this last road trip, there were times when I felt Mark’s presence in a powerful way that I haven’t since he was killed. My time on the road separated me from the familiar. Is that what opened me up to new possibilities? I’m not sure. It makes me wonder if the routines of daily life ultimately deaden us (and close us off) to something beyond the realm of the “normal.”

*****

Waking up in a hotel in Shippensburg, PA the day after Father’s Day, my plan to head south seemed foolish. No longer did driving to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina to see an indie band I’ve longed to see live seem reasonable. Of course, nothing’s felt reasonable in our lives since January 21, 2017.

Up to that point, my trip had a mission: find some geography where Mark walked in Pennsylvania and retrace a few of his solitary footsteps. I’d done that on Sunday afternoon, even burning my feet walking barefoot on PA-641, heated up by temperatures in the 90s. I could hear Mark saying to me, “Poor Papa. You better leave the barefoot walking to the professionals.” His manner was always one where he’d have said it in a way that wasn’t cruel or unkind—he liked poking fun at his overly-serious dad. I miss that trait like so many of his other endearing qualities that I’ll never experience again.

Mark was fearless. Or, better, he faced his fears head-on. Critics might offer that if Mark hadn’t felt the need to face his doubts or heed the call of the road, he’d still be with us. He might. No one knows these things. He wouldn’t have been Mark Baumer, vegan superhero, though. He would have been a shell of who he became as a man, a model of what a male could and should be.

Sitting in the parking lot in Shippensburg, my car packed and ready for the road, I had the urge to bail on North Carolina and head home. What did I need to find south of the Mason-Dixon Line? I’d accomplished what I set out to do. My back was hurting all the time. Why put it through any more than was necessary?

I asked Mark what I should do. Don’t worry, I didn’t hear an audible voice or anything. But I did sense that he’d have wanted me to continue.

“Dad, you’ve always wanted to see Pavement. Now you get to see Malkmus with the band he’s been with longer than Pavement. Plus, you’ve never spent any time in North Carolina.” I pointed my Honda Accord south.

Seven hours later, I’d arrived at the Airbnb where I was staying. My GPS directed me with precision. After unpacking the car late Monday afternoon, I called Mary. “I miss you,” I told her. “Do you think I’m stupid for coming all the way down here?” She could have said “yes,” but she told me, “you need to have this adventure.

Earlier that afternoon I’d stopped at a Food Lion to pick up groceries for dinner that night. I planned to cook something simple and make a big salad. When I was getting back to my car, I received a call. It was Gabi calling me from LA. I’d missed her call on Father’s Day. I returned her call, but we’d missed one another again, so I left her a voicemail.

She asked me about my trip and how it was going. She told me she’d laughed when I told her about what Mark’s reaction would have been to “poor Papa’s” burnt feet. We talked a bit and agreed to continue the conversation later in the week.

*****

Mark believed most people were good. I was reminded of his positive outlook on my trip. In Buffalo, two older woman gave me a hug in a restaurant after learning about Mark and my road trip.

A couple I met at Cat’s Cradle hung out with me between sets and told me a little about their own experiences moving to Virginia (from San Diego) for grad school (William & Mary). Then, jobs brought both of them to the Tar Heel state and Greensboro, about an hour west of the club.

The staff at Cat’s Cradle were chill. In fact, everyone I came across in my day-and-a-half in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill seemed really mellow.

It was hot while I was there. Tuesday’s temps approached triple digits. Yet, I made the most of it, touring UNC in Chapel Hill and then, going over to Duke in the afternoon.

I met a young lady at UNC who worked in the school’s Visitor’s Center. Her name was Sarah and she was a New England transplant. Without her guidance, I would have come up short during my brief visit to the campus. Instead, she took the time to highlight places on the map: like Wilson Library, the Campus Y, and the Old Well. This dates back to the school’s founding in 1793.

Oh, and Thomas Wolfe, who wrote Look Homeward, Angel, a book that influenced one of my essays in my last book, began studying at UNC when he was 15!

I was blown away when I ended up at Duke in the afternoon. New England schools like Harvard have nothing on this venerable Southern institution of higher learning.

My goal was to visit the chapel and see a fraction of the 55 acres of wooded and landscaped areas making up the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, while making my way to the west side of the campus from the parking lot adjacent to the school’s Visitor’s Center.

Thank god for shade, a refillable water bottle, and water stations.

One reason I was fixated on visiting the chapel was that I’d read a great deal of Stanley Hauerwas during my last attempt to remain tethered to anything resembling Christianity. Hauerwas, a longtime professor at the Durham school, has always defied neat categorization within a theological framework. One of our last public intellectuals, many consider him an “evangelical leftist” for his very public disdain of American militarism and consumerism. He’s also been quite critical of mainstream liberal Christianity and democracy. Knowing he’d preached from the chapel’s pulpit and walked the grounds at Duke enhanced my all-too-brief visit.

*****

Life is what you make it, it really is. No matter what’s happened to you in your life, you have choices. Since Mark was ripped from Mary and me, we’ve tried to carry on. At times, I think we’ve accomplished it as well as any two people can.

No matter your station in life, I think doubt is a regular companion for many. Yes, if you have the world-class arrogance of Donald Trump, perhaps doubt never crosses your mind. But most of us, who have some measure of humility, and even lacking in self-confidence, will question ourselves.

As I went back through and watched Mark’s videos, it was quite easy for me to see that he had his own doubts during that final walk. Merely being on the road for a week, by myself, helped me to get a sense that it’s tough convincing yourself that you are doing the right thing when you go “off-script.” Yet, day-after-day, he summoned strength, found humor, and connected to the beauty he noticed all around him.

There were times on the trip when I simply marveled at the beauty surrounding me: at Niagara Falls, driving through the Allegheny Mountains, and passing through the Blue Ridge area of Virginia.

Back in Maine, reflecting on all that happened over 2,100 miles and 13 states, I’m working with my current D.O., Dr. Jessica Bell, to get my sacroiliac dysfunction addressed and my body back to where it was before. Bell is gifted in a way that my previous D.O.’s were not. She operates on a different plane. I’d say she is attuned in ways to how the body, emotions, and our spirits are interconnected in ways that few Western physicians ever consider upon graduating from medical school. For that I’m grateful.

Travel allows humans freedom to experience things that might not be possible during the work-a-day, nine-to-five routine that often sucks the life from us. But in a capitalist system, work and routine is the Faustian bargain struck that allows us to maintain some semblance of what some call “success,” but is merely a life filled with things.

I don’t know what the alternative is. I wish I did. I’m convinced that people like Mark were working to find a way outside the bubble. If he’d had more time, I’m positive he’d have created his own pathway and model I would have followed him into. Something much more viable than the lives most of us have crafted at the moment—lives that are often an illusion and not actually real.

That’s just some of the takeaway from one week removed from routines and the familiar.

One of my Spotify playlists from the trip.