DIVAGATING
By Gwen S. Clarke
I’ve hit upon the perfect way to travel. It precludes limping home with back pain from African-safari-gone-demolition-derby or e-mailing the empty marble expanse of “what O’Hare looks like at 4 a.m. when everyone’s flight but yours has departed”. Not to mention spending a week in tropical Jamaica, protectively and totally swaddled against skin cancer. (Full disclosure: The above is gleaned from this month’s collection of family vacation war stories.)
For this inveterate traveler, being the sole attendee in a recent exercise class during vacation time would have lit a fire under me a decade or so ago. Being married to a career airline employee gave me a continuous “space-available” carrot hanging in front of my nose. Think: traveling half-way around the globe just to spend Mother’s Day in Hawaii with said parent. Think: routinely spending every homebound flight planning the next trip. Think: touring the St. Louis Zoo in July instead of hiking in Mt. Ranier’s snowfields, thanks to being “bumped” from a sold-out flight.
Alas! Inconvenience has lost its luster. Flexibility seems highly over-rated. I love all my stuff, located where I’m accustomed to finding it. I love my own bed. I love my quiet mountain hollow, where I don’t hear other people’s stirrings. But deep in my back molars, I’m aware there are places I’ve never seen and experiences I’ve never enjoyed.
The solution to my dilemma resides no farther away than the front pocket of my wallet. I’m able to visit as yet unknown places by using this little white boarding pass, also known as my library card.
A while back, I went with William Least Heat-Moon across America via his book: River Horse. That was a real two-fer, inasmuch as we not only wended our way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest in his small boat, portaging here and there, we paralleled and relived the western half of Lewis and Clark’s voyage of exploration.
Heat-Moon’s a great fellow to travel with, having sent me on an unexpected and extended odyssey of my own with his earlier book: Blue Highways. That journey began one of exploration on my part. When I read, in that ultimate arm-chair travelogue, his tactile description of a centuries-old wooden banister having a texture that felt like the skin of an old plum, it rekindled my writer’s fire.
I was smitten by the impact possible from the combination of a few perfect words into a vivid mental picture. At 55, I resumed the writing career that began and ended in high school. It had laid dormant for nearly 40 years because my duties on the Miami High Times staff also required selling ads. I hated selling ads.
Long on my ubiquitous bucket list has been a trek on the Pacific Crest Trail. Back in 1975, I hoped Christmas-gifting my spouse and children with National Geographic’s picture book of the Trail would inspire a vacation on that wondrous byway. Didn’t happen. But what did happen recently was Cheryl Strayed’s grueling best-seller: Wild.
I vicariously struggled through this long-awaited hike with her, getting seriously miffed at her blatantly irresponsible lack of planning which overloaded the two of us with an uncomfortable backpack and had me wincing from the bloody, blistered feet that resulted from her not breaking in those ill-fitting hiking shoes. Then she compounded the felony by dropping one of them off the side of a cliff. I wanted to smack her; this was not what I’d had in mind.
Tim Pegram came to my rescue with his closer-to-home solution: The Blue Ridge Parkway by Foot. The memoir of his 460-mile hike across the national park, which he had lovingly maintained for his entire career, scratched my itch. I read to exhaustion, dozed, then read some more. I was tired but content when he and I reached the western terminus.
I just got a come-hither look from Larry McMurtry to travel on Roads with him. Ready on a moment’s notice, but I’m seriously thinking about upgrading my travel class. This armchair needs reupholstering.