Setting Down Roots

Leaving your past life behindPlant yourself in community. People used to settle down, find a good job, build a home, raise a family, retire at fifty-five, knit and/or play golf for the rest of their lives. Ah, the quaint, short-lived American Dream. In todayâ??s society, the American Dream is a restless one. We change jobs three, four, five times before we are forty, to say nothing of retirement age. Technology grants access to our own temporary pseudo-tribe, making it convenient to avoid our own neighbors. And prescription drugs help us to not even care. All the while, what we truly desire is a sense of community and permanence. This is what Eddie Hilburn calls the â??tumbleweed life.â?? And while we canâ??t change the frenzied pace of lifeâ??at least not overnightâ??we can influence how it affects us. Following the narrative of his own life, Eddie helps us, his fellow wanderers, learn how to put down our rootsâ??no matter how many times weâ??ve been uprooted in the past.

Hilburn, Eddie