guff

Wanderaffection

I’ve had my share of small adventures and spent time wandering distant airports in cities like Brussels, and Vienna, and… well, there was Brussels and Vienna, but mostly there’s been Chicago and Indianapolis, and Miami and Fort Lauderdale. I think there’s a stop in St. Louis in there, though I don’t remember when or why. Admittedly, my frequent flier punch card is somewhat skimpy on the holes, and my suitcase tends to stay dusty in the closet. I’m more of a stay at home traveller, holding a book in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. Not that I regret the scarcity of personal voyages to far off lands. This has been a pretty good life so far with a fair share of experiences, even if it does lack a thick, fascinating travel log.

But it wasn’t always going to be that way.

Early on, long before words like responsibility and 401K crept into my regular vocabulary, there were many locales I wanted to plant my feet for a time. All kinds of places across the planet: the dry, awesome desert of the Sahara and on its fringe those shining white walls of Timbuktu (they don’t shine like they once did); the sweltering beauty and intriguing people of Jakarta; the rolling hills and language of Scotland; the bleak wonder and size of the Australian Outback. For a time early in my adulthood, I wanted to paddle down the Amazon river, amble up the Andes mountains, and wander the somewhat closer to home terrain of the Adirondacks. I certainly didn’t lack in my desire of locations to go.

Why didn’t I strike out for any of these remote climes, tacking off and traveling wherever my heart and chance chose for me? Probably because a few real life obstacles interfered. One of them, actually the biggest, was a lack of funds. I’m sure it’s possible to tramp across the world on a shoestring budget, but typically even that requires a pretty large shoe to start off with. A shoestring without a good pair to tie them into tends to break at the most inopportune time and strand one in Turkey or Brazil or somewhere else too far for a helping hand from friends and family to reach you easily. Also, there’s this deep driving force in the bones I apparently lack. Not sure what to call it, but it’s a motivating genetic ambition that pushes people to just get up and go, and I don’t seem to have that trailblazing strand of DNA. Or I have it, but it prefers to stay dormant most of the time. Reading, first in books, and now on the Internet (but of course still in books), satiates what little hunger for the open road it’s able to muster in me.

So I’m of two minds about the fact I’ve done so little journeying of substantial and personal concern in my life. On one side, it sometimes feels like I’ve missed out on an early dream of mine. But on the other, I think of all those dirty hotel rooms, long airport lines, inedible meals, and troublesome locals I’ve avoided. And as I said, it’s not like I’ve missed out on a life. Just one without much of a travel itinerary.

C’est la vie, et le voyage. Wonder why I never wanted to go to France.