Real Americans

Looking through the windshield at what comes next

The view from our campground in Monument Valley, AZ

Rael and I are back home from a 3500+-mile trek in our camper van. We drove a loop from Portland to Texas visiting extended family and friends, some of whom we hadn’t seen for over a decade.

Along the way, we saw places I haven’t been to since I was a kid, and some I’d never seen before. We visited Rocky Mountain National Park and heard elk bugling (no kidding, it sounds like humpback whales). We drove through the vast plains of the Texas panhandle. We checked out the Houston Space Center and the biggest Renaissance Festival in the US. We watched 200,000+ bats spiral out of Carlsbad Caverns and into the dusk, and explored the massive cave the next day. We visited the International UFO Museum in Roswell, NM, and ate too much chile in Santa Fe. Our last stop was Monument Valley, the magnificent Navajo tribal park.

Our trip was amazing in the low-key, grungy way road trips often are: moments of adventure, silliness, and awe tucked inside hours spent on interstates and parked in rest areas, gas stations and Trader Joe’s.

Like many of you, I’m struggling with the psychological weight of the US election. It settled on me the moment the calendar flipped over to 2024. I wouldn’t call it depression or outright panic (like in 2016), more a constant downward pull of fatigue.

Day to day, I’ve managed ok. I shifted my news and social media habits, upped my exercise, stuck to my mindfulness practice, and supported the candidates I want to see elected. But there’s no erasing my dread and sadness about the immediate future our kids face.

The road offered a counterbalance to the stories swirling in my head. Seeing this country in its immensity and diversity, the physicality of the plains and the mountains, the ranches and farms and oil wells, the dusty towns, the urban sprawl…it lent dimension to a reality that’s shrunken and distorted by the brutish narrative of red vs. blue.

I’m not saying our toxic political climate is just a mirage. We felt the tension and saw plenty of inflammatory billboards and campaign signs. It’s not like everything’s fine.

But rolling through the country mile after mile offered a kinesthetic experience of this moment that was more hopeful than the political narrative I can’t seem to avoid.

Our trip was full of the conversations among strangers that happen when you’re out in the world and far from home. Rael and I found ourselves chatting with folks working in the shops and truck stops, fellow travelers, and people sitting next to us in cafes. We didn’t seek them out, we just got to talking. A few minutes of human contact here and there that, most of the time, left behind the gentle warmth of connection.

I’m recalling that warmth as I anticipate Election Day. I’m thinking of the musician in a Santa Fe gallery who told us where to go for a good dinner and maybe catch his band afterwards, and the Monument Valley tour guide who recommended the book of Navajo history he preferred, and my cousins in Plano helping their daughter vote for the first time, and my niece and nephew in Ft. Collins moving toward adulthood, and all the others who crossed our thousands-mile path.

Every one of them, real, complicated people with lives as varied and important as mine. Each of us connected by conversations and highways and votes, traveling together into whatever comes next.

💬 I love to hear from you. Comments are open to all for a week after publication, and archived posts remain public for six months. Paid subscribers have unlimited access to comments + the full archive.

My high-impact, low-stress, high-joy plan to help elect Kamala Harris

Doing the good that's in front of you

Raising responsible citizens

Notes of note

Notes sometimes contain affiliate links. Here’s my affiliate policy.

• Oliver Burkeman shared a great perspective on managing election anxiety. Read How Not To Freak Out About the US Election at The Imperfectionist.

• Also helpful: my friend Alice’s latest post. Read We’re Gonna Get Through This at

  The Fainting Couch
  .

• Alice told me that Burkeman’s latest book, Meditations for Mortals, earned a permanent spot on her shelf. Sold! I’m bailing on my library hold! More at Amazon and Bookshop.org.

• I might skip election night coverage entirely, make a pot of soup, sit by the fire, work on my stitching (I’m re-learning to embroider), and go to bed early. I’ll wake up to whatever results are available the next day. Just sharing this as a viable option.

Finally, a dear friend sent me this snippet of poetry after we traded thoughts on the election. ⬇️ 🩵

A woman standing in the weeds.

A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next

is coming with its own heave and grace.

— from Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? by Mary Oliver

Thanks for reading Parent of Adults. If you enjoyed it, please let me know by clicking the ❤️ or the Share button. These small actions really help and are so encouraging.