In my youth, when I felt the tug, I would usually go. Between 1976 and 1980 I hitchhiked about 12,000 miles, back and forth between the Atlantic and the Pacific, up and down both coasts, From Baja up into Alaska, Maine down to Key West, into Mexico and Canada. I was usually broke, or very close to broke, and that didn’t bother me much. Forty-plus years later, I find myself still daydreaming about what might be over the next rise or what might happen should I take a left turn on an unfamiliar road and just keep going. The urge never completely leaves me. This has likely been a handicap where career and relationships are concerned. To just go—to travel without an itinerary or destination or deadline--is a unique experience and a little bit addictive. Many people never experience it, and this is probably by choice. Most people (I suspect) would not enjoy the feeling at all; but I do.
Many years after retiring the thumb I’m still regularly seized by the urge. I find myself looking at maps online and paying particular attention to the places where the roads peter out. I have maps on my walls. I find myself browsing for new and better camping and hiking gear, or calculating how many thousands of miles are left on my tires. Sometimes I wonder if this is normal behavior for a 63 year old.
My 2004 Sprinter van has just 43K miles on it and there is plenty of room for my fly rod, my golf clubs, a cooler and a camp stove. Experience has taught me that people generally become less intrusive the further out I get from the urban centers, just as crazy as anyone else, but more willing to live and let live. I like that, too. I used to think I’d be happier living in a tiny, off the beaten path town--San Cristobal, New Mexico, say, or Damascus, Virginia—but I have come to understand that I am deeply tied to many people now and particularly New England. Whichever road I choose, they all seem to, eventually, lead me back here.
Today, three or four untethered months feels about right, and I usually choose some sort of destination, even if it is only faintly penciled in and it doesn’t really matter if I get there. In 2019 I explored the American West, ostensibly looking for great trout water. This spring I hiked the first 750 miles of the Appalachian Trail. And now, as Labor Day looms I find myself torn. Would it be better, I wonder, to return to Virginia in March and pick up the AT where I left off, or to travel the back roads of Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Northern Italy? Or, instead of doing either, to just jump in the van and head south and west, along the Gulf Coast, staying off the main roads and gradually making my way from Pensacola to Harlingen, Texas? Maybe go overland to Harlingen and then make my way back along the coast. It’s a wide open horizon.
This is decidedly a 1st World conundrum. Very, very few people in the history of humankind have had the opportunity and ability to even contemplate just taking off. Certainly not with any expectation of safety or a modicum of comfort. In the not-so-distant past making such a trip meant leaving forever. My father’s parents (for example) left Ireland in the early 1900s and never returned. In the 1800s, taking to the roads was long and arduous. Someone in the family once showed me a photo of a distant relative from Sligo (maybe not so distant), James Trumble, taken in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1860s. It must have taken a considerable effort to get there. Today? I have cell connection and air conditioning. It almost feels like cheating. I can be totally off the map and still speak with my sisters in New Zealand or my family in Cambridge and Rhode Island.
Were I a younger man in the position I find myself today (retired and with an income—not huge, but enough—and a successful daughter who is independent) I’d probably be more daring and choose points on a map that are more difficult to reach. A village in the Amazon. A fishing settlement on the Hudson Bay. A town in Siberia. The Cook Islands. A Hmong village in Laos. Mongolia. As it is, at this point, I have aches and pains and though I’m okay for a week or two in the wilderness, after that I start thinking about a bed, take-out meals, hot showers and freshly brewed coffee. I have no illusions. No matter what I do now, I won’t be getting any younger, and there are not a lot of Air BnB listings in rural Mongolia. I’m too old to take up throat singing, anyway. A parasitic infection would kick my ass. I can dream up a whole lot reasons to dial the adventure back a bit. So I put such destinations on simmer and tone down the expectations. But circumnavigate Sicily? Spend a winter in Nome? A few months on New Caledonia? A few rounds of golf in the Rockies or the desert? These things are possible. Time flies, though.
It isn’t the aches that concern me, or even the discomfort of sleeping rough or cooking on a camp stove or an open fire. What I tend to wonder about is if I’m such an outlier I am effectively bonkers. I look around at other guys my age and they seem inclined to stay put, maybe take a vacation once or twice a year to Aruba, or Vegas, or the Cape. A vacation? I think. Like with a schedule and an itinerary? What would I take a vacation from? I like my life.
I’d like to get back to Appalachia. Not just the trail, but many of the people. Mongo, the young man who owns and operates the Lickskillet Hostel, could use a hand with some repairs, and I can put my tools in the van and get there in about ten or eleven hours. It would be nice giving Mongo a hand, and being back in those mountains with my fly rod. That’s another trip to consider. Maybe this Fall, as a warm-up for the Spring.
I used to believe that I was looking for something—The Ladder of Success, maybe, or some country fried version of Utopia, with farm animals, pancakes made on a wood stove, swallows in the porch eaves and a killer view. Now? Now I suppose I’m just looking. The manic urgency, the feeling that I’m missing something important, no longer haunts me. If something akin to Paris in the 20s is happening today, it can happen without me. For most of my life I have felt like I skipped a class (or an entire subject) that everyone else took, and that the most amazing salon conversation was happening somewhere, just out of my reach. The people were wittier, the fish bigger, the food better, the sunsets more colorful. That feeling is gone. There is nothing wrong with where I am, nothing exponentially better anywhere I might go. People will be people, just as flawed as I am, anywhere I look. When I pack my bag I’ll pack my fears, just like anyone else, and carry them with me. A long drive, or a long walk, or a long flight isn’t going to change my life. A Happening like Burning Man or the Daytona 500 or The Super Bowl won’t move me. I have no illusions about this.
And yet? I’ll go off on another adventure. The clock is ticking and one day my calendar will fill up with medical appointments and (if I’m fortunate) time with grandchildren. But that day isn’t today.
The road is still calling me, and the trip isn’t over.
Heed the call of the road! My husband just took off last night to continue his section hiking on the AT. Starting this time in Marion, VA and has planned about 105 miles of hiking. I had kept him in the loop about your adventures and he enjoyed your trail stories!