It's a crisp, cold Thanksgiving morning in Austin, Texas. From the middle of the Congress Avenue bridge I watch the sun fire up the colors of the Town Lake tree line and warm the egrets in their tree-condominium. A rock band plays in the distance for me and 20,000+ other runners of the annual Turkey Trot, but a stillness hovers--a pause pregnant with magic. A woman begins the national anthem over a loudspeaker, and like any public event, a few clueless people scurry to their self-appointed pecking order. The rest of us attentively stand facing the flag just beyond the tree punctuated with egrets.
Something about hearing our national anthem always makes me cry. It's not the lyrics, but the energy connecting everyone. At that electric crescendo moment, when the right pitch affirms our freedom, I feel goosebumps, tears, and connection.
I am an urban nomad. From my first National Geographic World magazine, I yearned to be a cultural anthropologist, and in some ways I have been fulfilling that yearning. Beyond traveling, I have uprooted myself many times to destinations of varied cultures, weather patterns, and lifestyles. People have criticized my restlessness and a few marveled at what they perceived to be courage to move and start over somewhere new. I hesitate to characterize this as courage because the urge draws from a place deeper than my heart.
The critics often ask what I am running from or searching for, implying that I should be settling
down. Of course, I have also asked myself similar questions, which brings me back to that bridge on Thanksgiving morning...
All of us strangers are standing on the bridge awaiting the trot start and listening to the anthem roll along. Suddenly the sound quits, and without missing a beat, the entire crowd begins singing. And, we sound pretty damn good. Eventually the sound returns, just before the crescendo, and we are exactly in time, and singing, and connected. This is the magic, and I am reminded of part of my favorite Hafiz poem:
Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
I realize that rather than forcing myself to settle into a specific place, I can just allow a connection wherever I am at the moment. Eventually, something pings me, and my soul feels drawn to a new adventure. Wherever I am, though, I can return to the bridge.
