Gone Away

“These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.” Frankenstein

“I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” Moby Dick

Ever since yesterday afternoon, I keep imagining myself, hand rising and falling outside of the window, some acoustic music playing, and the wheels of my car hot against the road.

I’m having an itch for things remote.

This happens occasionally. I just want to escape, to run, to spend a day away.

It would just be something spontaneous and perhaps a little risky or dangerous, or maybe just exciting and new.

Every time I image myself gone away for awhile, I imagine old, broken paved roads; the kind that have cracks and dips everywhere, the kind that have been neglected. And I think of rusty gas stations where weeds have grown up around the corners. And I think of big, open fields where old grain silos are gray in the background, and abandoned farm houses that are white against bright blues and greens. And I think of big lakes, and long piers, and tall grass.

I have no idea why this is what I keep imagining every time I think of getting in my car and driving, but it is. I guess- if I were to get in my car and just drive- I’d like to go driving towards nowhere. Call it the “country” or whatever you’d like, but I’d just like to go where there aren’t any people, or buildings, or at least, anything familiar.

Have you ever considered this before? We have entire days away from school, or even an entire half of the summer free (I finally have this luxury) and in that span of time, imagine where a car, and gas, and a road could take us?

Turkey sandwiches, and warm cokes, and rolled down windows, and open fields, and those silos I keep thinking of, and sleeping in the backseat of a car, and laughing at everything and nothing, and listening to music, and eating Little Debbie brownies out of the wrapper, and staring at the sky, and reading all of those books you’ve been meaning to, and stepping out of the car doors- every time- to somewhere you’ve never been before, or maybe, somewhere you haven’t been in a long time.

Consider this: You don’t have to go too far, and you don’t have to eat turkey sandwiches (maybe you prefer peanut butter and jelly...or maybe ham and cheese), but you could go. You could just get in your car, with everything you really need, and just drive. There’s nothing stopping you.

It’s no wonder I was so captivated by novels like Robinson Crusoe, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, The Call of the Wild, Treasure Island, Huckleberry Finn, or Around the World in 80 Days growing up. I read that entire classic adventure series in Junior High School, and recalling now, I’d like to read them again.

Maybe somewhere in the human heart, or maybe in the soul, we all have some kind of longing to escape and to discover. This would explain why men built ships to cross what could have been the end of the earth to find out what was on the other side, and faced starvation and death in seeking out the West, or the East, or the South, or the North.

I was always fascinated with Lewis and Clark. I used to think, when I was younger, that if I could have lived in any time, it would have been in their days when they were just setting out so that I could have tagged along at their heels. Of course, I couldn’t really go back to their days, so novels had to suffice, as did creating little maps for my friend Kimberly which allowed us to live out our own adventures. And when maps weren’t enough, there were always forts to build, the railroad tracks to walk down, or the creek.

I think it’s about time to put the novels down. I’ve walked the tracks enough times to know which bend the bridge is around, and the creek, which once seemed so mysterious and deep, is really only ankle deep and only goes so far. But the road is endless. And I’m having an itch to know where it could take me.

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
-Emerson (from the essay Nature)