At the Foot of the Sequoias
W
By Mitchell Dunbar
alk through the ARV workshop and you’re bound to hear Rick’s classic rock music serenading the floor. He’ll play the music at his own work station or throw the speaker on the back of his bicycle and bring it to you. For the past eight years, Rick has brought his calm and focused problem-solving to custom plumbing.
he remembers the sights and sounds of that bus rolling down the road, without air conditioning or FM radio, as his mother read the six of them a story about a wild west bronco. Rick is 68 now, and the memory remains.
For Rick in particular, it is still easy to transport himself back to his 11 year old self and feel it all over again. At that age, Rick was already an experienced camper, but he was unprepared for the scale and beauty of what he saw. He remembers how the Grand Canyon looked impossibly more grand than any photo he’d ever seen of it; he remembers his father driving the Volkswagen through the titanic roots of the redwood trees, trees you can’t find in New Jersey;
Like Rick in 1964, we, too, had never seen a mighty redwood tree. Griffin and I had heard stories of the California Sequoia, but nothing could have prepared us for seeing one for the first time. It was spiritual, proof that miracles were real. Standing in the ageless forest, witnessing this great tree, I could’ve been Rick; I could’ve been my father; I could’ve been anyone who has ever felt childlike awe for nature’s impossible architecture.
When I heard of the Irish realm of Tir na nÓg, I was struck by its transcendence. While we may Proudly displayed at his desk - a picture of a classic never travel the golden path to this mythical land of eternal youth and joy, I believe there are green Volkswagen Bus with a popup tent on top. moments in all our lives where we enter a similar It’s the bus Rick’s father brought to their New Jersey family home in 1964, when Rick was 11 years space, experiencing the journeys, emotions, and old. That summer, six of them packed into that bus beauties that connect humanity across time. and set off for a journey across America. I took a couple cross-country road trips around 2020, 54 years after Rick’s. These adventures The Volkswagen saw practically every state, passing through the Grand Canyon and mesas of connect me not just with Rick, but my father, who traveled the country in an 80’s Mustang., and we the southwest, the mighty Redwoods of the west are connected to anyone who has ever felt the coast, and the big skies of Yellowstone and the Dakotas. They’d stay in campgrounds, parks, and, same wonder and awe from such travels. Instead of a Volkswagen bus and a family of six, or a in 1960’s fashion, pull off the interstate to sleep Mustang and hometown buddies, it was a Sprinter right on the highway. His father recorded the entire adventure on film for them to look back on. van and my friend, Griffin.
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