"Roads," He Told Me. "Roads Are the Difference. If You Have These Roads Everything Will Be Okay."

Driving to and from Syracuse, I kept commenting on the incredible landscape, leaves, hills, trees, skylines, light and the ways the highways meandered through them. I stated, "Yes, the jargon will be omnipresent on television and radio, but on the road we can see the power of Mother Nature and recognition of the cycles she presents."

The roads, however, are mankind's interjection that we have some sort of semi-control in the grand scheme of things. In the United States, the empire is built with a tremendous interconnectedness of roads, highways, airports, bus stations, railways, and paths. It is a nation united by the potential of getting from point A to point B as quick as possible and rather safely. This is the threading of the American people. We are divided by regions, ideologies of lived experiences, but your infrastructure is one to keep us bound together. At some point, all the fear-mongering and anger will have to be reminded that in the end, this really is the United States. It is the land of the free. It is the land of liberty, with spacious skies, from sea to shining sea. If it implodes, well - there goes that, but I don't think it will. I still have faith that we are smarter than we are being portrayed.

In Kentucky, before James Akech was murdered by punk American kids, he was mesmerized by the roads. He said, "If a nation has such roads, it will be okay. It is a land of progress."

I hope that is true.

Once I became a home owner, I realized the power of nature when grass started coming up through the sidewalk cracks. I could weed whack or put down a chemical, but it is pointless. Nature wins. If the time has come for the human species to finally go ape-shit and totally lose its sense of self-control and we lose it all, it's okay. It will only be the end of mankind. Nature will still prevail and I'm okay with. It can still be miraculous, beautiful, majestical and spectacular with or without homo-sapiens on board to claim it all for their own, marking it, owning it, denying it, and using it to oppress others and promote others.

In the end, I'm with the Ents. I'm with the Groot.