A Virtual Road Trip As a Source of Inspiration, Part I

I love road trips, and I know a lot of my friends feel the same way. Do you?

This past week I was on the road, driving from California to Montana, and I realized that my love of road trips goes so deep that I began to consider that maybe in a prior life I have been a drover, criss-crossing the great basin of the American west with herds of cattle.

Being on the road is a time when I feel beyond grateful – it's a heart swelling, abject gratitude for everything that is in my life, for every single decision I have ever made that has brought me to this moment on the road. It's a time when my creative juices flow out every pore; I keep paper and pencil close by, stopping often to write notes, (or not stopping, and getting even MORE creative when I try to decipher my writing!) make sketches – trying valiantly to record the flood of inspiration moving through.

Now that gas prices have forced me up against the reality I was already facing - of not wanting my deepest gratitude, creativity, inner peace and joy to be tied inextricably to petroleum products and global warming, I drove and pondered – what do I really get from road trips, and how can I create that in my day to day life?

I identified some fundamental pieces.

First, I became aware of a relaxed sense of soft focus. While I am on the road, I'm able to let my mind wander, without focusing tightly on one subject, one project, one thought. But neither am I multi tasking. There is no sense of distraction. My mind is taking in millions of images, while it ranges freely, making new and unusual connections. Remembering, dreaming, and inventing.

It is a very fluid state of mind. Perhaps the motion itself turns my left brain off for awhile.

Music is the next piece. I carefully choreograph road trips with playlists on my iPod – alternating between music for sweeping vistas, and pounding energy music that I can sing along to at the top of my lungs. With what I know about anchoring – setting up cues that will recreate a certain feeling at other times – I use music as my main anchoring technique. I can recreate the feeling of driving over Monida Pass, between Idaho and Montana, just by listening to the flying theme from Out of Africa.

And finally the sense of being in between things – having a bit of a break from the routine, seeing new places, the sense of adventure, the possibility of meeting new people all play in as well.

My question has become:
If I want to create a virtual road trip for myself, today, what will I do?

What would you do?

I have some ideas, which I'll be passing on in Part II. For now, happy daydreaming!