One day into the road trip and we had already stayed from the plan, but even the next morning I didn't want to leave Corvallis and my aunt and uncle’s comfy backyard. I had made the journey east away from my family, but this time felt different. Not only was I driving, which took away my last weeks with them, but I also had all my stuff in my car and I knew I probably wasn’t ever going to live at home again. That year had been comfortable and a bit antisocial, but I felt happy at home. Every time I had left in the past I knew I was coming back for the summer, and I knew I was going to be back for my first year of college. This time, I had no idea when I would call it home again, if ever. Moving back to Bryn Athyn was exciting, but moving away from home with unknown plans for the future was scary. I was unknowingly clinging to the last bits of home as I drifted off to sleep that night, and as I woke up to an odd scratching sound that morning.
You know when you wake up in a new place and have a few moments of extreme confusion? Imagine that feeling but intensified by seeing the underbelly of a cat suspended above you on the mesh room of a tent. Moxie the Siamese cat was trying desperately to get in for some snuggles, but found herself mashed between the tent and the rain cover. The night before we planned on sleeping inside, but things went a little awry. Once we had decided to stay the night, we set of for some disk golf. I laughed at the sight of my thirty-something relatives who still lived in a college town, spending their days in soil labs and evenings at the disk golf park. Most things about their lives lend themselves to never growing up, and I can’t think of two people who better embody growing up but never losing the sense of fun.
The sun sank faster than expected, and we headed downtown for some food. I half-dozed in the backseat while Declan and my uncle talked about the most common causes of house fires. I swear Declan can interest himself in anything if someone wants to talk about it. A phone call rudely interrupted my uncle while he was telling us the guaranteed number one most common cause. He answered, swore loudly and motioned for my aunt to turn around and head home. Ironically, the type of pyrotechnical activity that had plagued their home was not the most common, which, because I know you’re dying to know, is a clogged clothes dryer vent. When we left for disk golf, they had left a pot of stock boiling on the stove, and the whole thing burned up and filled the house in smoke. Luckily, nothing was damaged, but we couldn’t spend any time in the house so the neighbors who had warned us about the fire invited us in and gave us food and musical instruments. The best way I could describe it is dreamy, but really we all just felt so grateful that everyone was okay, the house was mostly unharmed, we had found food, and the neighbors were kind enough to let us, random relatives of their neighbors, into their home. The rest of the night was spent with musically talented people playing instruments and singing bluegrass, and me banging the tambourine to what I hoped was the beat. It felt a little bit like I was with the percussion group we had seen earlier that day, which felt like years earlier by that point in the evening.
The nice thing about being on the road, which we learned pretty early on, was that people are always interested in you once they hear what your doing, so it's easy to have a conversation with anyone along the way. My aunt and uncles neighbors were the first of countless perfect strangers that helped us in the most kind and entertaining ways. The unexpectedly crazy night in Corvallis made it harder to want to leave, but I knew that there were more surprises in store for us down the road.