This must be the place: ‘Roll on, to the North Star, I got the key to carry on’
The magazine rack at Ingles.
Garret K. Woodward photo
The Universe. It never ceases to amaze me.
This evening (last Monday be the time you read this), I felt kind of lonely. A lot of that feeling has to do with the last eight months or so of my life. Work burnout. The flood. The aftermath. The breakup. The aftermath. Turning 40. Starting therapy. Life, in general. And so on.
Coming into the impending summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about the age-old question, “Where to from here?” I’ve never questioned my path. I’m doing what I love for a job and live where I choose to live. But, sometimes, I find myself wondering just where I’m currently standing, and what do I see as I look around at the landscape surrounding?
And tonight sits especially heavy on my mind, since it is the three-year anniversary of the passing of a dear friend, someone who greatly impacted my life, and who I was lucky enough to say goodbye to in person at the hospital before she left this world. I was never the same after that day, in truth. It shook my existence, with the ripples still reverberating out.
I’m also thinking about my late cousin, Nate, who was like the older brother I never had, and the upcoming anniversary of his departure at the end of this month. I can’t believe it’s already been four years since I last saw him. And I ponder the difference between solitude and loneliness, and how each remains so wild to grasp and comprehend.
Thus, with everything of this nature floating around my mind, I went to get some groceries at the local store. It was raining out and the store was pretty much empty. Quiet strolls down aisles underneath bright fluorescent lighting. As I grabbed some items and headed down one aisle for no particular reason, I found myself at the magazine rack.
Related Items
Asheville Poetry Review marks 30 years
This must be the place: 'Dear lord, do right by me, you know I'm tired of being lonesome, ornery and mean'
This must be the place: 'Down here in the Bardo's light, in the cycles, days and years'
Botany, beauty and Bartram: The flower hunter's legacy
In the corner of my eye, I saw the latest issue of Smoky Mountain Living, a magazine I’ve been the music editor for since I first rolled into Western North Carolina back in 2012. I stopped and flipped through the issue with pride, and scrolled my article, my name in the masthead, too.
I thought about how psyched my younger self starting out in journalism would be to see my work on the rack, and how it still does mean so damn much. It was a small, yet important signal from somewhere in the ether that I must keep my head up, and keep pushing forward. The gratitude remains, and will forever be part of my old soul ethos.
The next morning, I awoke and readied myself to head to the newsroom to put out this week’s newspaper. But, not before grabbing some breakfast at the Main Street Dinner in downtown Waynesville. While reading my book and kind of daydreaming, I realized the date was June 10. It was exactly 20 years ago when I decided to become a writer.
June 10, 2005. It was a Friday. I was 20 years old. All by myself at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. The sweltering heat and humidity of East Tennessee in June. It was also my first solo road trip (Upstate New York to Southern Appalachia). Up until that point, I’d either gone on road trips with former girlfriends or simply with my family as a kid.
At the time, I had just completed my sophomore year of college at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, as well as my second year of running track and field for the school. Early morning, June 10. Laying in my tent, just before the unbearable sun and high temperature hit the festival camping area, I was reading Jack Kerouac’s seminal 1957 novel “On the Road” for the first of many, many times.
I had just finished Chapter 5 when I flipped back to the end of Chapter 1 and reread the last sentence: “I was a young writer and I wanted to take off. Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.” I’d never felt this way about a book, let alone one particular sentence.
I put the book down for a moment and stared off into the distance outside my tent. I could hear laughter from the next campsite, a jam session occurring off in the distance somewhere. And then, it struck me. Like a bolt of lightning. A real deal epiphany. Clear as day. I said to myself, “I’m going to be writer.” I didn’t know the first thing about how to write or becoming a writer.
Heck, I didn’t even know how I’d even go about trying to make living doing so. But, I knew then and there that I wanted to travel across the country and around the world, having all kinds of wild and wondrous experiences, and writing about it, sharing it with the world in hopes of sparking a fire within others that Kerouac sparked within my heart and soul.
I remember the drive back to the northeast, where I stopped at my then-girlfriend’s house in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. I told her about my epiphany and how I was going to put all of my energy and focus into writing. She goes, “But, you don’t know how to write.” “I’ll figure it out,” I replied with the same confidence, persistence and determination that resides within all these years and miles later.
The very next semester, I changed my major from broadcast journalism to print, all while I was doing semester abroad in rural Ireland. Oh, and between Bonnaroo and hopping onto the plane for Europe in late August, my relationship with the Poconos girl fell apart, as did other aspects of my young life. Things were in limbo, but I held steady.
No matter, I was heading to Ireland for four months of knowns and unknowns. The entire trajectory of my life shifted, or finally found its course. I prefer to see it as the latter. That trajectory took me from Connecticut to Eastern Idaho after college graduation, where I became a rookie reporter for the Teton Valley News in January 2008
Onward back to Upstate New York and trying to make ends meets as a freelancer, only to accept this position at The Smoky Mountain News in 2012. Onward to realizing my dream of writing for Rolling Stone in December 2018, where now I’ve become a contributing writer for the publication, with dozens and dozens of published articles, the assignments themselves taking me all over the country and into parts of Canada thus far.
And so, exactly 20 years later, the journey continues, my love for writing and wandering growing stronger and more curious each and every day. I don’t take any of this for granted, nor will I stop digging below the surface of the people, places and things that fascinate us all, inspiring us to take on the world and provoke the beautiful chaos of time and space, faces and places.
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.
