This Ain’t No Small World

I’m sitting on the window seat in my room at a 100-year old Inn in the heart of the Smoky Mountains as I write this.  Last night I played a show here in Balsam, North Carolina…tomorrow I’m in Flat Rock, NC…three days ago I was writing songs in Vancouver…I chalked up some air miles on my way there from playing the Cavendish Beach Music Festival in PEI…and just over a week ago I was playing Dauphin Country Fest in Manitoba and the Carlton Trail Jamboree in Rabbit Lake, Saskatchewan. Needless to say, my body has no idea what time it is!  I’m accumulating a large pile of laundry that’ll need to be done when I get home, and I’m really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again, but I am really soaking in life on the road.

For instance, I never would’ve thought I would see the east coast sun come up on Trans-Canada Highway 1 en route to the Charlottetown airport, and then watch the sun go down on the SAME DAY on the west coast end of the exact same highway!  I’ve shared a really huge stage (and a really tiny van between flights) with some really cool band members that I met for the first time this summer.  I’ve played my songs under tents in the afternoon heat, with couples dancing on the grass in front of me.  I’ve played them through giant walls of speakers that knock the wind out of you when the kick drum plays, looking out over a sea of sunburnt people singing along and campers parked Woodstock-style as far as the eye can see.

I’ve been swimming on hidden red sand beaches among Prince Edward Island jellyfish, eaten fresh home-baked pie at the end of a gravel road in the heart of northern Saskatchwan, screamed my way down a giant indoor waterslide in a posh hotel pool in Vancouver, and last night I sat and drank lemonade on a porch overlooking the Smoky Mountains with the deep south summer sweat trickling down my back.

They say it's a small world.  It's not.  It's a huge, endless world of possibilities!