05/30/2023
50 STATES TOUR STOP #51 : Virginia
As I write this, I am nursing a hole in my heart in the shape of four people who are no longer in the room next door, and the stages they occupied across America.
Our final show was upon the eve of Memorial Day in the town of Marion, Virginia. This ending point for the tour marked not only the fifty-first performance since we set upon the road, but also the eighth appearance of LFH in this home-away-from-home. The town’s tradition of placing (rather large) flags in honor of the fallen began some 15-odd years ago, with around 130 names. This number has grown, though, as now the flags count nearly 1,400. It is a sight to behold.
In the last four months, we have experienced innumerable wonders. We’ve set foot upon snow-drenched mountains and rambling, dusty plains; in lush jungles and through petrified forests; to bouldered hills and crater-made lakes and oceans both angry and serene stretching far beyond sight. We’ve climbed volcanos and delved into caves and collected dirt upon our soles from the East, West, North and South. We’ve explored sprawling urban centers and lost our way upon slick and muddy roads. We’ve parched ourselves in the desert and sweat through our clothes in the bayou. We’ve shivered and burned and gathered and danced and sang and taken in a lifetime’s supply of beauty and challenge and victory and growth. We’ve aged more rapidly than most. We’ve cried, and we’ve learned. We’ve laughed and loved. We’ve seen sights and smelled smells and collected relationships both fleeting and life-long.
I do not know whether this tour was a part of me or if I was a part of it. But as we drove away from our farewell bonfire and our team split into five directions, a piece of myself went missing. A small fragment of my soul is no longer in me, and I feel its absence. It is a familiar ache. It is a reminder of the gravity of something great. With time it will heal, as these disappearances do, leaving only a small mark to remember it by.
I do suspect, though, that of all the bittersweet scars of shows and works and times gone by, this will be the last to fade.