Dust and Tribe puts a premium on outdoor experience. On some level it might seem contrary to the spirit of wilderness adventure to involve automobiles. Maybe it is, but we love what we love.
And we love a good roadtrip.
We can’t speak to the horrors of the carbon footprint we may be leaving behind, or to the blight of sprawling blacktop lacerating the virgin countryside. Cars are a problem, and we know it. But so is our sense of curiosity that has led us into places better left alone, and also into places where God became Real.
Everything has a dark side. A road trip is no exception.
Personally, I never had a chance to draw much of a distinction between a roadtrip and exploring the wilderness. My first time doing either was in 1995. A friend of mine told me and a couple of other guys that we could borrow his dad’s van for a week. We did just that and drove up north, from southern California to Vancouver, British Columbia. Along the way we stopped and camped and it was the most glorious week I had ever experienced up until that point in my life.
Two years later I drove from California to Maine. The year after that, from California to Alaska. I was hooked. I wanted to go farther. I wanted to go longer. I wanted to fold as many people as I could into the memories I was making.
Wilderness and the highway were fused, and to date nothing gets me more excited than a few days or a few weeks on the road. You can go farther, and sharing the ride with a few friends, for less money than virtually any other form of travel. That gets you into places you might otherwise never know.
Everyone talks about how the journey is more important than the destination. That’s true, and roadtripping is where the fullness of this truth is most apparent to us. In a car with people that we care about and without the physical preoccupations of more rigorous outdoor adventures, the conversations can really take off. There’s no escaping engagement. Trapped for hours in our cage on wheels, we’re going to learn things about one another. We’re going to sort things out. We’re going to laugh together, annoy each other, and make up in between pit stops for gas and spicy chips.
Along the way, we’ll see things and meet people. But even more interesting is that we will be met.
The wild places will meet us. The people we encounter as we pass through towns will be learning about us. Roadtripping is an opportunity to be whoever it is we want or need to be in these places and with these people. Roadtripping is about renewal and refreshment. It’s about tearing away the set pieces of the life that we’ve each created, the representations of what we’ve come to expect from ourselves or what we hope to impress upon others, and replacing it with the open road and all of the possibilities contained in that notion.
Since 2020, Dust and Tribe has pioneered the contemporary road caravan. It’s everything we love about roadtripping taken to the next level. It’s about reaching back into our history as the descendants of traders and nomads and recognizing that, in addition to whatever migratory or commercial task they may have had to accomplish, they did so in the company of others.
Our first California caravan took us north, keeping primarily to the redwood forests where we camped among the ancient groves. In 2021, we headed to the east coast to drive the fabled Blue Ridge Parkway through sunshine and rain which dramatized the already epic landscape into something tangibly mystical.
This year, we’re tracking the volcanic history of the Cascade Range, God willing.
The caravan format is the perfect way to travel with family and friends. On the road we can deepen preexisting bonds with the people closest to us. In camp, we can build new relationships. Dust and Tribe creates the itinerary with waypoints mapped out. Everybody knows the destinations, but we’re all free to take our own way.
That’s the way things are.
We may as well go along with it.