Dear Friends,
Early Wednesday morning (the 5th of May), I embarked on a more than 7,500-mile, 125-hour butt-on-the-seat tour of the country I have spent more than 20 of the last 30 years of uniformed service on away games to help secure. In many respects, it will be a journey within a journey.
First, after visiting friends and family and just looking around in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas, I will be at my alma mater, New Mexico Military Institute (where it all began for me on 16 May 1980 and where I have not been since). Exactly one day short of 30 years later, on the 15th of May, I will commemorate my military retirement by watching the cadets graduate and receive their commissions, receive my retirement award, say a few words of wisdom, salute the flag, remove my uniform, climb back on the Harley and ride off into the sunset towards California, where I will take an two-week operational pause to escort, on behalf of George Mason University, a group of a dozen graduate students on a field trip to Liberia, where I served not long ago. I will resume my cross-country gallop on 5 June, follow the paths of the other nation-builders and surveyors along the paths of the first transcontinental railroad and the Lewis & Clark expedition, visit some more friends, and hope to arrive back in the “District of Calamity” on the first full day of summer, 22 June. We’ll see whether I can maintain pace.
The other voyage, however, is one of identity, both individual and collective. Often the longest of journeys circles you back to the place where you started, only to discover something that was there (or not there) that you couldn’t understand when you started, which was the purpose of the journey to start with. I am taking this trip not just to close a chapter, but to re-discover my (American) identity, and that of Americans in general by asking myself and them two fundamental questions:
1. What does it mean to be an American?
2. What does that mean for America, and for the rest of the world?
I truly believe that the fate of the Nation in this new century, and much of the world the United States tries to find its place in, will depend very much on how – or whether – we answer these questions. And not just in terms of the common defense; rather, in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and form a more perfect union, thus securing “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”.
So my voyage of discovery is one to place both my past and my future in context, and by doing so, gaining insights on how that may play out on a much grander scale. As above, so below.
I look forward to sharing my impressions and to hearing from many of you along the way, either on Facebook or here on this blog, as we enter into a “rolling dialogue”.
Keep the shiny side up (and the rubber side down)!
Best regards,
Chris
