Hurricane

This fall as the hurricanes came crashing onto America’s shores, we had countless tugs coming from inside saying “GO, HELP, GIVE, BE THERE. “  We gave in small ways over the phone, but it wasn’t what we had envisioned almost four years ago when we began this journey of living and working full time in an RV.  One of the first items on our Pros and Cons list that we stared at for months before we made the plunge, had “Helping victims of Tornadoes and Natural Disasters” as one of the top items in our PROS column.   We’ve helped a bit and give almost everywhere we have called home, from volunteering at state parks, picking up trash, sharing time at homeless shelters, and of course assisting family and friends. However, we still have visions of being able to drop everything, pull our little roof and be at the place in a crisis when the most people need just a little love, a helping hand or a chainsaw to help clear the way to their door.

This year, as the storms found our cities, we were just in the wrong places.  No! That’s not right.  We were in AMAZING places and the perfect place for us.  We were in the peaks of the Colorado Rockies.   I think it had to be one of the best summers and early falls of our lifetime.  We were exploring, hiking, discovering mushrooms, installing solar on RV’s, and so much more, but the logistics of hooking up our home and crossing the country and making our way down to Key West to help our dear friends in their time of crisis, we just couldn’t make work.

Around the first of October however another storm began brewing in the sea.  Not the ocean, not down in the Caribbean like the rest of this years tropical depressions stirred, but in the sea of family.  Within a phone call, we learned that the eye had landed and within a day we began the 1800 mile journey across the heartland of the country towards Tennessee.   Towards my Mother.   Towards a broken hip,  Towards changes.

Sharon adding screws to Mom’s new deck ramp

I’ll spare the details of the storm and the things that have happened since we made the pilgrimage back to the hills of Tennessee in October, but today finds us with our rolling home still temporarily in storage.  We’ve moved into my mother’s house and are wrapping our love around her.  Hopefully as she improves we’ll slowly move our life back into our rolling roof and continue on down the road.

Perhaps this story and its comparison to any of the 2017’s hurricanes isn’t right in some ways and we apologize if it offends any readers.  But the truth is,  it was our clarity and helped us as we sadly closed the door on our camper to say to each other, “This is our hurricane. We are here to help and should be grateful for this mobility in our lifestyle that can allow us to be truly present, to love without want and be in that place that needs us most.”  This is also what Two Lanes of Freedom is all about!

As for 2018, oh we have lots of RV dreams.    We still hope to make it down into the sunshine state to volunteer again at our favorite Hot Springs  and then follow the spring flowers north and hopefully westward.   Maybe Summer in Idaho, maybe in Ohio or maybe I-Don’t-Know.   It doesn’t really matter, as long as we are rolling along together.

(Image in the header is courtesy of Joe Raedle/Getty Image)   

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