I woke up in Lusk, Wyoming this morning, population 1541. I'm staying at a sweet little motel and just had breakfast cooked by the owners - they do an omelet station every morning outside, served from an old chuck wagon.
I realized this morning that when you're traveling rural, you are forced into environments that aren't corporatized. There is no McDonald's in Lusk. Or Panera. Or Starbucks. (There is a Subway - lots of Subways in rural America actually).
Instead, I had dinner last night at a bar - the kind where you open a steel door and walk into a dark cave of a room that is lit by TV's, gambling machines and beer signs. This morning's breakfast was under the sun chatting with fellow wanderers and the owners. Lunch will be at a local cafe - I'm sure there will be friendly waitresses and lots of big hats and big trucks parked outside.
There's a different sort of connection when you're in environments where you can feel the hands of the owners and the soul of the community, manifested by a graduation picture at the registers and signs for meat processing and volunteering on the bulletin board. And people talk to you - I get into all kinds of conversations in places like that, ones that don't happen when I hit up a McDonalds for my morning Diet Coke.
It's making me think about spaces, about connection, about where soul lives in a world that is increasingly filtered through distant ideas and machines. Most of all, it just feels really good.
Onwards.