Musings of a Compulsive Thinker

Wanderlust

I've got it bad. I have always romanticized the adventure of traveling: cruising down the open highway, rolling across the country over railroad tracks, making a brand new journey. Perhaps this is part of the reason that I prefer not to travel by jetliner; on the road or on a train, you get a real sense that you're actually traveling. I love looking out the window and discovering a new panorama at every moment. I want to freeze every one of those moments and remember it, treasure it, because who knows when I might pass this way again; for each moment I have experienced, every place I've ever been, one thing remains true: I came, I saw, I moved on. And while it's nice to slow down, maybe even stop for a while and really experience a place, I want to keep moving, because there's something new another mile down the road, around the next bend.

Every single time I cross a set of railroad tracks, see a train, hear a train engine's horn, I want to follow those tracks, I want to catch that train and see where it takes me. Interstate highways are a perpetual temptation; I usually manage to curb the impulse, and I pull off at my planned exit and go wherever it was that I meant to go, but I always think, What if I just kept going? San Francisco, here I come. Or Cheyenne, or Chicago, or Albuquerque, or whatever else may lie ahead.

The open road: the steady hum of the engine, the rhythmic rumble of pavement under the wheels, milemarkers ticking away the distance, an endless stream of asphalt stretching ahead and behind, land spread out wide all around. Every now and then I find that I have come unexpectedly into a moment that is almost a kind of nirvana; in those moments of near-perfection, I could just keep following that road, going onward forever.

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Labels: everyday, imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel

posted by the alygator @ 5:56 PM