Five Degrees from Home

How the journey home mirrors the journey inward

From the quiet side street, we turn sharply right onto Cerrillos as soon as the orange truck speeds by. Within seconds, we’re stopped in the middle of the street, waiting, traffic whizzing by from behind, waiting for a moment, a gap of cars, then boom, we’ve swung a U-turn left and north onto the grand avenue of Santa Fe.

Along this road, I calculate how far removed the AirBnB is from this main artery of the city. Two streets away. Two degrees of separation from the lifeline of traffic, commerce, the rush of people commuting and returning, each to their own homes, their own degrees of distance.

I’m reminded of the pilgrimage I walked at dawn from Pojauque to Chimayo, accompanied by tens of thousands of people walking roads less travelled. We saw places, four, five, six degrees of separation away from the main roads of this nation.

Good Friday Pilgrimage to Chimayo, ‘26

Layers of connection, of intersection, of crossing lives that sometimes never touch.

I was glad that day to meet some fellow travelers. When the bus going back never came, we hitchhiked, and made friends with strangers in the back of a pickup truck bed, the road sweeping by beneath our feet.

The Body of a Nation

I imagine the United States as a body, the interstates its main arteries. I-95, I-5, I-40. I’ve lived by the I-40, a block away and ridden its flat expanse all the way from Tennessee to California and back to North Carolina, trips stretched over a lifetime and a continent.

Then you exit the interstate onto a local artery; and then you repeat this shift again and again, till you arrive home, like blood flowing from the heart to a specific vein.

Some of us live right off the hum of the highway. In Boone, I live five degrees away.

5 Degrees to Home

1 degree away: you’re on a state highway, heading north, surrounded by trees and forests on both sides.

2 degrees away: you’re in a town, driving half as fast, passing homes on hills, country churches, and winding your way through routes carved by rivers.

3 degrees away: the atmosphere changes. There’s not a line of cars. You might see one or two. A dirt road meets you if you don’t turn. Horses appear. A quiet settles. The wind seems louder, though it hasn’t actually changed at all.

4 degrees, and 78 miles from the interstate now: You turn again. The only people turning are your neighbors. It’s at the corner where there used to be an abandoned trailer and a dead end sign, hardly welcoming. I got both removed with some communication. The road thins out and winds even more. There’s the spot where I crashed once. Familiar bends.

5 degrees of separation and we’re here, a world away. No sound but the wind. An occasional neighbor. Birds call. It’s a welcome quiet.

Boone in summer

The Journey Inward

Writing this, I’m reminded of the dip we take within ourselves to re-encounter our soul.

1 degree down, we stop talking.

2 degrees, we become aware of our thoughts barging to the surface.

3 degrees deeper, you’re seeing under the thoughts the body, holding in certain areas, loose in others.

Deeper still, a silence, a pure awareness, just that you are.

Where Silence Lives

What makes the most noise? Highways, news, a negative comment, criticism.

What brings the most rest and peace within? Heading home.

It’s funny how our inner world can mirror the geography of our world outside. How ashrams, meditation centers and places of retreat are, like our soul, just a few degrees removed from what makes the most noise outside.

And the more we follow the route, the more familiar and second-nature it becomes.

Here’s to the backroads that take us home, again and again.

What’s been the most memorable trip for you, where inner and outer intersected?