From Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck-
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself....A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
The tough part is the before and after: the time spent dreaming and, postpartum, the time spent in something like a re-connection to daily (home) life. Even now, as I imagine someplace warm, dry, and curry-filled, I'm chastened by the knowledge that this forever other is in fact a void. I wander about the house, living an abstract existence, fuzzily occupied with both the present moment and the imagined future. Which is stupid. Like some powerful drug, I put my faith in the notion that this distant, exotic place will so explode my mind as to render me incapable of anything but complete and utter surrender to the moment. I'll sit on the mountain in buddhistic bliss, taken by the splendor of this most buena vista. Or so the people at Conde Nast, Lonely Planet, and National Geographic would have us believe. Stupid, and also bullshit.
The truth is that travel, just like life, if often rather mundane. Lots of waiting around to get where you want to be. The beach. Dinner. Sleep. It's rather easy to fall into the doldrums and, if you're not careful, a longing to be home. (See the irony here? When I'm home, I'm thinking of the exotic, when I'm in the exotic, I'm craving my nest. An ever-tightening spiral in search of contentment. And a good curry.)
Given this rather dour assessment, one might logically take a dive out the nearest window, assuming it's a good ten to twenty flights up. Cheaper than airfare, with a greater certainty of success at trip's end. But there's hope, I think. And, since we're not all dogs, it will take a bit of work. (I'll come around to the dog reference in due time. Patience, Horatio!)
A few years back, while motoring to the sleepy hamlet of Negaunee to windsurf on Teal Lake, I saw an odd sight across the road. A man of some years was pulling a large, two-wheeled cart along the shoulder of U.S. 41. I slowed down to get a better look, and deduced he was a traveler. His cart was stuffed with various worldly goods--stove, folding camp chair, lantern, pots and pans. Bags of clothes, food, and tools. Certainly there were other things, too, which I don't recall. This was a big cart! All covered with a sun umbrella, and connected to the man by a Rube Goldberg-esque harness and handle. I swung around, pulled in neatly behind his cart, and smiled as I exited my car.
"Hi there." We shook hands, I learned his name was Joe and that he was a retired dentist from western Canada, and that he was taking a big walk.
"I've always been taken with stories of people who undertook big challenges in simple ways. One foot in front of the next-type challenges." Joe was compact and tan. Fit. Easy to smile and laugh. I immediately felt at ease and had to excuse myself for asking so many questions about his rig (He had pretty well re-built the whole configuration over the past two years) the length of his journey ("I'm walking until I don't feel like walking anymore.") and general issues of loneliness, family, etc.
"Oh! I don't mind. We can talk as long as you'd like. I'm not in any hurry..." True dat! Which is to say, seeing him there in the traces of his cart on that cloudless August day, I really got the sense that he was exactly in the right time and place. That this man had somehow gained elevated ground. (Think:Mountain top, Buddhistic bliss, etc) And so, once again, we fell to talking. And laughing.
"I guess part of my reason for taking this trip in the first place was to learn how to slow down and live where I happen to be. Which is kinda funny when you think about it. Of course, I probably wouldn't have said that when I first started out." Joe thought for a minute, and offered up a piece of his world. "Just yesterday I was walking along, and it was getting to be late afternoon. I knew from my map there was a little bit of a town a few miles ahead, and my brain started churning out all the wonderful things a town had to offer: Fried food, cold beer, hot water. People." Joe considered, looking back at that moment, before adding, "I had to really work to slow my brain down, and get back to where I was...instead of where I thought I wanted to be. When I imagined a big trip, I wasn't imagining little towns with gas station food. I imagined long stretches of empty road and the chance to chew on who I was. Which is exactly where I happened to be!" He went on to describe how--to borrow a line from the good people at Nike--there is no finish line. How he is challenged every day with the effort to slow down and live in the moment.
We parted ways shortly thereafter. Gone, but not forgotten. In fact, I've thought about that exchange a great deal in the last five years, to the point that I wonder if it actually happened. I googled Canadian dentist, long walk, to see if anything came up. I mean, you never know! But nothing did. And, finally, I guess it comes to this: Whether or not it really happened has nothing to do with the truth of the exchange. But the one thing I didn't ask (Mythical?) Joe was this: Why do you need to take a big walk to find a sense of peace and place? Hmmm. I guess there comes a time when one needs to put on their big boy pants and find out for themselves.
(Note-Dog is, of course, God spelled backwards. And God is love. Love is not possible without complete presence of mind and heart. Dogs, by virtue of their God-like status, don't need to work to find peace. For us mere mortals, it's going to take some work.)
