Like a wind gushing forth, these first two weeks of HTR have been a rush. Starting with our departure, it was a scramble to leave Houston.
Ben and I moved out of our home and prepared the pop-up truck camper in less than a week with the help of our family. My intentions to draw final observations of Houston and bake a ceremonious loaf of bread were abandoned. I threw a week’s worth of clothing and a box of art supplies into the camper and crossed my fingers.
For the first few days, the highway curved, small buildings stood, and gas stations lingered as cars and trees hugged us on either side. We had a series of sunny, summer days yet it felt like we were darting through a tunnel.
Ben drove the first two days–hauling us from Texas to Tennessee. We camped in state parks and briefly surfaced to hike and meander among the trees.
While Ben drove, I caught sight of a few landscape features and then returned to my phone to thank family, coordinate logistics, and research strangers’ opinions of upcoming landmarks. If anywhere, I was living in digital, bodiless territory outside of our truck.
This is the Here & There Residency (HTR), a newsletter by artist Erica Reed Lee about living on the road and traveling across the United States in a pop-up truck camper built by Benjamin Lee.
By Monday, I had a superficial read of the northwestern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee–very green vistas, cooler air, waterfalls, and some nice lake spots. Hiking at Cloudland Canyon State Park, I steered around families, circled back, and jumped back in the truck.
My desire to rekindle my relationship with physical place neglected, I nervously scrolled and thumbed my way to an interesting “local” stop on our route headed northeast.
A pause finally arrived with a two-night stay in Asheville. Hiding away in an Airbnb, I refocused and revisited the past few days of HTR. If I wasn’t in Cloudland, Chattanooga, or the Smokey Mountains, where had I gone and how could reconnect myself to where I had been? I pulled out the folded canvas that I had packed and began to paint an abstract storyline to retrace and rework my journey tangibly.
With the (work) week in full swing, I took the wheel, driving the truck camper for the first time so that Ben could catch up on his remote work.
Up, down, and around, we bundled forward on the Blue Ridge Parkway–a beautiful and monumental public works project consisting of 469 miles of road that I was completely unaware of until a few days prior.
Sadly, my attention was focused solely on the white lines I was supposed to stay between. Terrified of flying off the ridge or smashing into oncoming traffic, my eyes were glued to the road. Meanwhile, Ben’s attention was elsewhere as well, directed towards his correspondence taking place online.
By the end of the day, my stomach was knotted, and I mourned not being of/in the places we passed.
The Here & There Residency (HTR) is a newsletter by artist Erica Reed Lee. If you liked this post from Here & There, why not share it?