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| Talking Story with Arlo |
Listen up, daddy-o, because the cosmic jukebox just dropped the needle on the wildest track of all: There is a time to wander, and brother, that time just hollered my name through a bullhorn made of sunsets and diesel fumes.
I’m in the fourth quarter now—two minutes left on the clock, score tied, and the coach just handed me the ball to me and said, “Kid, stop running clock. Go score or go home.”
So I kicked the recliner to the curb, kissed the porch swing goodbye, and pointed my forty-foot land yacht toward whatever highway looked the shiniest. No game plan, no GPS nagging me, just me, the open road, and a heart that finally figured out the meaning of “light packing.”
You hit a certain age and the world starts shrinking.
Parents check out, brothers are distant with better Wi-Fi, old buddies trade poker night for sleep,
-- and everybody suddenly loves their own couch more than your company.
Me? I looked around at all that beautiful isolation and thought, “Man, this is cozy… but cozy is just another word for coffin with better upholstery.” So I flipped the script. Instead of waiting for the leaves to fall and the woods to go gray, I decided to chase the green ones still wearing Technicolor.
There’s a rhythm to it, dig? Springtime in the soul hits right about the time AARP starts sending you junk mail. You feel the sap rising, the blood doing the twist again, and you realize the days are passing like summer storms—loud, fast, and gone before you can say “where’d the sun go?”
But there’s still love out there, and baby, love is warm. It might only last for a cup of coffee in a Wyoming diner or one ridiculous night telling lies around a campfire in Quartzsite, but it’s warm while it’s happening, and that’s plenty.
So I roam in the springtime of this late-blooming heart. I let the frost worry about the harvest; I’m too busy harvesting stories. One week I’m parked next to a retired circus clown in Florida who taught me to juggle oranges while reciting Dylan .
Next week I’m in Oregon swapping fishing lies with a grandma who out-cusses sailors and out-drives teenagers. Love shows up in the summer sun of those moments—short, blazing, and perfect.
The trick is the Fork-in-the-Road Game.
You’re humming along, radio playing whatever golden oldie the universe feels like serving, and up comes the split: I-80 west or I-25 north?
Left looks like mountains, right looks like prairie, and you don’t decide until your bumper kisses the gore point.
Then—bam—you flick the blinker like you meant to do it all along. That’s jazz, man. That’s life without a net. Sometimes you end up at the world’s largest ball of twine, sometimes you end up watching the northern lights dance over a wheat field with a stranger who feels like an old friend you haven’t met yet. Either way, you win.
People keep asking, “Don’t you get lonely?”
Lonely? I was sitting still, watching the same four walls practice their impression of eternity. Out here I’ve got a rolling neighborhood. Today’s neighbor is a biker with a beard down to his belt and a teacup poodle named Brutus. Tomorrow it’s a widow from Minnesota who bakes rhubarb pie that could make a grown men cry.
We swap stories, split a six-pack of laughter, and when the wind shifts we wave goodbye like sailors who know the sea always brings you back around someday.
Nothing long and dear, everything fleeting and fierce.The woods are greener over yonder, always. The path is new, the world is free.
My old bones feel twenty-five every time the wheels start turning.
I don’t need a fire against the cold anymore—I am the fire. I don’t need to sleep when the day is done because the night is just the day wearing a tuxedo and whispering, “The show ain’t over, pops.”
One of these mornings I’ll take the ultimate fork in the road, the one with the pearly gate toll booth and Saint Peter working the EZ-Pass lane.
I figure I’ll roll up, engine still warm, coffee in the cup holder, and a grin the size of Texas. He’ll lean in the window and say,“Name?”
I’ll tip my imaginary hat and answer, Just another happy wanderer, boss.
"Been practicing my whole life for this leg of the trip.”
And when he waves me through, I won’t even signal. I’ll just ease onto that golden highway, windows down, radio cranked, chasing the greenest woods I’ve ever seen—knowing, finally, that there was a time for roots, a time for blooming, a time for harvest, and glory hallelujah,
-- there is a time to wander.
The tank’s full, the road’s shining, and the fourth quarter just turned into overtime.
And man, is it ever warm.
There Is a Time to Wander
Groove is in the Heart - Arlo
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