State of Zen

I wanted to relive one of my favorite days from my childhood.

   The strength of the wind could lift me up and take me away. The heat of the sun’s rays beating down upon me is almost unbearable. I can barely hear anything because the engines are deafening. One of the best smells, a hot engine running at its peak performance, is forcing itself into my nose, along with the smell of wet fields with every breath. The soothing vibrations of a purring engine are coursing through my entire body. My vision is blurring by the pure speed I am accomplishing, setting me into my state of zen.

            Suddenly I see a big yellow four-wheeler flying past me breaking the state of zen that controls my whole body. I then realize that my little blue Yamaha 350cc four-wheeler will never catch up to my friend’s big yellow Can-Am 500cc. I throw in the flag and surrender my lead. I pull over to the side of the road to relieve myself from the dust storm created from the dirt road and the pure speed of Fletcher passing me as if I was moving backwards. When he notices me slowing down, he does the same. As the stragglers see us stopped, they slow down and pull in behind us.

There are four of us riding our ATVs together on this hot mid-summer day. There is Andrew on his 450cc hunter green Honda ATV and Kurtis on his bright green 250cc Kawasaki. Fletcher is on his Can-Am and I am on my Yamaha. After we stop, we try to decide what we are going to do next.

            We finally decide on the perfect place to go. The shade will make the mid-summer day endurable, because if I stay here any longer I might spontaneously combust into a giant fire! As we get closer to our hang out spot, I realize this is our spot. We had made it our own and we put our sweat and heart into this place. All of the memories of creating our hang out spot start to flood my thoughts.

            There it is. It looks like home to me. Everything about it makes me feel comfortable. The Paragonah dirt, the smell of the pine trees in the area. The sound of the stream fluttering by just as a great monarch butterfly elegantly flutters its wings. There is a very large tree in the center. That tree holds up all of the branches that we scavenged from the area to create walls. The shade created feels as though I just stepped into a freezer.

From the nearest road, this hut is nonexistent. That is exactly what we wanted. We wanted it to be ours, and we did not want anyone else to know about it. It is our place to go when we want to get away from everything. As everyone rolled up, I forgot about everything else in my life besides being happy, and escaping the hectic world in which I live.

            As we all gather around, and try to find a good place to sit, I start thinking. I wonder, why have I always tried to get away from my reality and as Steve Jobs would say, “distort reality” to anything that I wanted. Even if most people did not think or feel the same about reality, I would not listen to them and I would believe anything I wanted. Using this distortion, I would create my own world where nothing bad ever happens. I would recruit everyone else into my world so no one would ever be in pain.

The hut we created is my reality distortion field. I could go there whenever I wanted, so I could completely forget about everything else in this world. Being in a state of zen is the greatest tool anyone could ever possess. This tool gives the power to forget the bad, remember the happy, the cheerful, and the moments that you would not give away for anything. The result is an endless river of endorphins that creates an unbreakable happy.

            I look around and see everyone’s face slightly sun burned from our hours of four-wheeling across the area. We are all dirty, and probably smell just like an engine, but none of us cares. We are just happy we are out here, and spending time out of our own homes. Being with friends and creating long lasting memories is what we all truly want to do.

            As the sun is setting I wonder where all the time in the day went. I notice that we have been talking for what seems like an eternity. As I watch the sun go down, I know that this is right where I want to be. It dawns on me that we all have to go home soon, but this realization is okay, because I know tomorrow we are going to do all of this again. Nevertheless, it will never be the same as the day before.