Maybe it was the boy in me setting out on a boy’s adventure. A wild hair. The ticking clock impressing on me to not set idle … to move … to keep moving.
The indigenous Australian people are known to go on a “walkabout” for short periods, some times for months before returning home. Some say it relates to various life stages; young males transitioning to adulthood, rites of passage, a solemn ceremonial or spiritual journey.
(I have to insert a note here: the political correct police have stepped in; they feel the term stigmatizes people on “walkabouts,” thus they want to rename it “temporary mobility.” I am not making this up. Renaming it “temporary mobility” kinda misses the whole point don’t you think? Sounds more like a walk to the bathroom in a nursing home. So I’m sticking with “walkabout” at the risk offending anyone.)
Actually, I am not quite sure of the WHY part of what I am doing on my “walkabout” … this circumnavigation of America discovery tour I have embarked on. I just knew when I began, and still know inside me, it is what I must do at this point in my life. A mystical spiritual river flows around me, pulling along to a destination I can't yet see.
Some ideas are planted in you and fade away. Some ideas stick around like a grain of sand in an oyster. An idea that won’t go away. An idea that turns inside you, irritating your imagination, till over time, maybe … just maybe … something meaningful and beautiful is created.
This idea of driving across America was planted when I was a teenager reading the story of a man who set out to travel America in a camper with his dog. Perhaps the concept stood out to me at that time as I related to it in my own adolescent rite of passage stage of life. It seemed like a cool adventure. John Steinbeck’s TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE documented America as he encountered it driving in his camper in a big circle, looping the continental United States.
“I’ll try to do something like that some day,” I said to myself. The idea would fade and reappear at odd times as the years continued to pass by me. And the years passed faster and faster.
In recent years I thought of converting a van or SUV into a camper to make a fishing trip through the Rockies, Montana, Wyoming. I like fly fishing. It was still just one of those “some day” bucket list items germinated during my high school days. I never acted on it having a series of excuses. I didn’t have a wife to travel with, no one close to be who could probably endure the long journey (without possibly wanting to shoot me or themselves during the uncharted trip), no friends who could get away for such a long trip … and my dog had died.
"Do or do not. There is no try."
- Yoda (Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back)
This journey was converted from a TRY to a DO the end of the summer of 2016 while kayaking in Colorado with my friend Rickly Christian. The idea reappeared like a lightening bolt from the sky above. I will write more about that later.
Do you have a TRY idea in your life that keeps reappearing? It may be time to covert it to a DO.