Road Trip!
Feast of Saint Anthony of Egypt
No Agenda, but a Hint of Salvation
About Road Trip!
Today, we get in the car and go. Destination optional, snacks required. Road Trip! marks the true start of the long, winding path toward Mardi Gras. There’s no plan and no playlist until you make one on the spot. The only requirement is motion. Ideally, your destination, if you must have one, is underwhelming, like a Walmart one state over, or a petting zoo that claims to have a capybara but really just has a suspiciously large guinea pig. We believe if you make the day about the destination, that's all you'll get; we also believe that “the journey is the destination” is a stupid lie. Being stuck in a car for hours, the indignity of using gas station toilets, dropping Skittles between the cushions—the mundane suffering of today gives the rest of your life meaning. Feeling tricked? Keep driving.
Ways to observe
(A) Low effort
Drive to the next town over, get a donut, and return.
(B) Recommended
Choose a hilariously anticlimactic destination (e.g., a concrete turtle, a vending machine museum) and make it epic. Take pictures, stop at diners, and buy something dumb at a gas station.
(C) High effort
Depart before dawn. Pick a direction, not a place. Avoid highways. Visit three roadside attractions, two local thrift stores, and one spiritual site (broadly defined). Journal about it in the parking lot of a Taco Bell. Send postcards.
Inspiration
You can go alone or bring a friend. If it’s the right friend, the silences will be as comfortable as the conversations. If it’s the wrong friend, you’ll learn something about boundaries, and how far you’re willing to drive to avoid confrontation. Either way, somewhere between mile 92 and the world’s most depressing vending machine, you’ll feel it: that drifting, half-useful peace of being nowhere in particular. This is the bargain of the road trip. Motion becomes meditation, by way of boredom and back pain. More often, boredom turns to impatience, the GPS gets passive-aggressive, and the playlist loops back to Bon Jovi before you’re ready. You start to wonder if this time could be better spent. Shouldn’t you be learning Portuguese?
So before you hit the gas, get your mindset right. This isn’t a pilgrimage, and it’s definitely not an errand. It’s a blank space. If you must be productive, fine—drive along a path that spells out “I love you” into the byroads so Google Earth can read it. Road Trip! lands on the Feast of Saint Anthony of Egypt, who walked off into a third-century desert seeking solitude and came back a saint. No podcast, and no book deal. Just sand and spiritual rigor. Today’s version is looser and louder (and surely worse for the environment), but it’s still about the clarity that comes when peregrinations meet bad ergonomics.
Adornments
Watch
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
A black-and-white road movie that revels in deadpan minimalism. The journey unfolds in vignettes of boredom and small absurdities, portraying the American landscape as an endless flat highway where every destination feels the same.
Paris, Texas (1984)
Paris, Texas follows a man who reappears in the desert after years of silence, then sets out to reconnect with the son he abandoned. Features gorgeous slide guitar by Ry Cooder.
Nebraska (2013)
A bittersweet road trip comedy-drama about an old man and his son making a quixotic journey from Montana to Nebraska. The father believes he’s won a million-dollar sweepstakes and is hell-bent on claiming the prize. His son humors him, and together they drive through dive bars and desolate Midwestern towns.
Listen
America by Simon & Garfunkel
A wistful folk ballad about a young couple traveling cross-country by bus, searching for meaning in the American landscape.
Read
Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
After losing his job and separating from his wife, William Least Heat-Moon outfitted a van and set off on a journey along America’s backroads, the “blue highways” marked on old maps. What followed was a slow, expansive meander through forgotten towns and odd encounters.
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
In 1960, aging novelist John Steinbeck set out in a pickup truck camper with only his poodle Charley for company, determined to rediscover the country he had been writing about for decades.