Euphoria On The Road

Have you ever experienced Euphoria on the road? I have this thing that happens sometimes when I’m engaged in long-distance driving.

Generally, I don’t like to drive, which is pretty funny considering I’m a traveling nomad that lives full-time in a van. I travel the SouthWest in the Winter and camp out in my family’s yards in the summer … making the trip twice a year between NY state and Arizona.

Runner’s High or Road Euphoria?

When the conditions are just right, I get something like a runner’s high driving long distance miles. It feels similar to a meditative state, which I’m very familiar with, but with alertness and my eyes wide open!

When the light is soft, the road smooth and the traffic minimal, my mind becomes free. Since there’s nothing much else to do but focus on the scene before me, my brain enters a slight meditative state, if you’re a science geek you’ll know it’s probably beta brain waves, alert but relaxed.

The landscape flows by me like a waking dream, vistas of trees and meadows and towns and cows, eventually turning into deserts and sand … while the sky beckons me forward in never ending shades of blue ombre.

Road Trip or Road Tripping?

When I get to this state, my thinking turns profound. I explore the existential questions of life … and sometimes experience almost hallucinogenic inner visions.

The last time this happened I could see that my brain was interpreting every molecule around me. The only true reality was my brain interpreting light waves, sound waves, and other molecules and quarks making impressions on my senses. Not only that, all life around me was engaged in the same process. We’re all just blobs of miraculous brains floating around in what we call reality … which is just a field of molecules and energy at the quantum level. I didn’t just know this intellectually, but I was experiencing it! Trippy!

When I talk about how nomad life has benefited my being, the mind space that I experience on the road is part of that benefit. Living as a nomad I have space to think, to ponder, and to really experience life as it is in the sometimes glorious present moment.