Less running, more chasing

There had been stirrings much earlier, but I still remember the exact moment I became a truly devoted wanderer, in spirit if not always practice. It happened in a Madison, Wisconsin hotel room, when I was thirteen years old. My parents were out for the night, and I had spent the better part of the evening in the swimming pool area, reveling in the independence their dinner alone afforded me. By 8 p.m. I had pizza delivered to the room, and was sprawled out on my bed, hair damp and smelling of chlorine, watching the movie Mask on television. It was all very run of the mill (at thirteen, I was capable of little more than a macabre fascination with Eric Stoltz's prosthetic makeup) until the final scene, when Cher walks away from her son's grave, toward the edge of the cemetery, gazes out at the road leading into the sun-washed LA skyline and Roll Me Away by Bob Seger starts playing. The sentimentally lumbering piano riff, cinched up by a single thin orchestra note, quickly got my attention, then came the opening line, a lyric that would prove seminal for many years to come:

'Took a look down a westbound road / right away I made my choice.'

I didn't know why, there was no clear reason, but the cityscape that had captured Rusty Dennis' attention at the tail-end of movie - the visual feast of buildings and sunshine and cars and power lines - caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up in a salute to longing, and in that instant getting there - that is, the journey - became astronomically more important than the destination. In fact, hell with the destination. The journey should never end.

I had only been half-watching the movie until that point, but all of a sudden felt heart-broken for what Rocky Dennis never got to do in his short life.

What followed in the next few years was a veritable parade of whiteboy troubadours - from Born to Run to Bat Out of Hell, from Take it to the Limit to Running on Empty - marching down the main street of my consciousness, each contributing to the soundtrack of my youth at different times and to varying degrees, all offering what I interpreted to be a simple solution to complex problems. To hear my rock and roll heroes tell it, what I experienced in that hotel room was totally valid, totally real. The road was not only an escape, their music declared, but an inoculation, a cure for what ailed me, and I wanted it. I wanted to wander, to drift. I wanted to make the road my own, so much so that it became the primary narrative in my life. Nothing if not mostly a pose, to be sure, but no less real, no less visceral. I felt it.

"In that instant getting there - that is, the journey - became astronomically more important than the destination. In fact, hell with the destination. The journey should never end."

I've kept the dream alive ever since, though over time it has slowly become less a dream, more a fantasy. I tell myself a sense of responsibility, an obligation to loved ones, to stability, to reality, was the reason for this, and that's probably true in large part. But it's also a little bit true that I just never had the stones to do it. I never could bring myself to take that leap, to make the choice and just go. I had opportunities over time, moments of unemployment and/or singledom, moments even when (I thought) nobody was likely to notice I was missing. But I never went missing. I stuck around.

Stayed the course, I tell myself.

Now, nearly thirty years after that first transformative experience, for a variety of reasons - some exhilarating, some unnerving, and some downright depressing - I think it's the perfect time to revisit the idea. I think it's time to find a way to stop merely dreaming about it, wishing it were happening, and make it happen.

Will I be 'running' the way I pictured when I was a greasy-haired, acne ridden teenager driving off into the night, but never actually leaving town?  Not at all. I'm not delusional (yet). I can't simply bust out of town at dawn anymore. I still have obligations, like anybody.

But honestly, I don't want to do it like that anymore. 'Busting out of town at dawn' is a fancy with a very short shelf life. It sounds nice on paper; gets the blood pumping, leg shaking a little, to think about taking off with no questions asked. Seger's Roll Me Away speaks in no uncertain terms of and to the very sort of despairing restlessness a lot of people feel, if only periodically, perhaps when things are not going so great and a sense of futility sets in. 'I was tired of my own voice...' indeed.  But the song, while stirring, is ultimately a work of pure fiction. It is the truly rarefied (and rare) individual who finds a way to drift from pillar to post with a minimalist footprint, at least for any extended period of time. Most of us, and I am in this camp, must create a reasonable facsimile when and if we go. We must endeavor to merge drifting with some sense of traveling. We must keep an anchor on board.

True drifting is also a game for the young, which I am simply not anymore. 

But that's okay! All is not lost! This great road trip, this stab at living nebulously (more on that later) can very much be achieved, and, I think, with greater satisfaction than would ever have been possible when I was 18. I was a numb nuts at 18. I'd surely have taken a wrong turn in the process of 'taking off', and wound up standing penniless on the side of the road in my underwear looking for a way to get back home.

Yes, now is the time in my life for this sort of thing, although I'd never have thought it. Like every teenager,  I more or less pictured myself in a wheel chair by this time. But truth is, standing on the doorstep of middle age, I feel more vital than I did back then. I think I could take my 18-year-old self, actually, in nearly every arena of competition.

And what's more, when I think about going now, as opposed to then, with time and maturity at my side, knowing what I know, about people, about the way the world works, being more comfortable with strangers and in my own skin than ever before, I really get amped up. Now is the time to do this! Really, what could I possibly have gotten out of a big road trip at age 18? Not the full breadth of experience, that's for sure. I would have only been running - from the past, from responsibilities, from every perceived and/or imagined slight, every moment I felt I wasn't being treated the way I should have been treated. I'm over all that now. Now I will be doing far less running, far more chasing. Not sure what I'll be chasing, exactly, but thinking about it in those terms still gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

Now is so the time...

"This great road trip, this stab at living nebulously, can very much be achieved, and, I think, with greater satisfaction than would ever have been possible when I was eighteen."

But if I'm going to do it, really do it, it needs to be planned out. At least, I need to start figuring out the logistics - financial, geographical, and otherwise - of driving the some 14,000 miles that have recently started to coagulate into a single thin shoelace wriggling across a map in my mind. If all of this planning leads to actually doing it, I will have accomplished something remarkable before I even get underway.

So I have set myself the goal of making this happen before I reach age 50. That gives me ten years to cobble together the time, resources and wherewithal. It is a dream that I have set aside from all other aspirations and endeavors in my life. It runs on its own spiritual power, though by no means is it impervious to something unexpected killing it off at any time, and that's part of the challenge too: navigating along the rocky coasts of middle age to a successful conclusion. 

1 drive through 48 states in under 50 years.

I have chosen this blog as a place to share my anticipatory thoughts, anxieties, and exhilarations, as that single morning - as yet undetermined but no longer unanticipated - draws nearer.