Vincent: "So, what are you going to do?"
Jules: "Basically, I'm just going to walk the Earth."
Vincent: (disparagingly) "What do you mean 'Walk the Earth'?"
Jules: "You know, walk from place to place, meet people,
get into adventures."
Vincent: "So, you're going to be a bum?"
A few minutes later and without having taken a step, Jules is deep into his first adventure. And soon enough Vincent will find reason to believe that 'Walking the Earth' may not have been such a bad choice.
Vincent and Jules talking the walk - Web Image
What struck me about the scene is how deeply embedded the idea of 'Walking the Earth' is in the human psyche. This concept of moving thru the world, open to experience and adventure, to insight and revelation. Think of the epic journeys in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Of Jesus's forty days in the desert as told in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Of Tolkien's The Hobbit and Ring Trilogy. Of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
"Not all who wander are lost."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
Web Image
Native Americans have their 'vision quest' while Australian Aborigines do a 'walkabout' and seekers of all faiths go on pilgrimage. In modern America our capitalist/puritan based system has little use for such treks. Corporate profits require conforming nine to fivers who keep production humming along, while also being diligent consumers, always focused on accumulating more and more stuff and seemingly OK with the life they sacrifice to get it. Vacations and retirement are little more than carrots held out to keep the duty bound trudging forward, as well as being another corporate profit opportunity. A stuff your face around the clock cruise? A gated community where your horde of possessions are safe?
Ugh!
Not for everyone and thank God for that. There are still many who aspire to long, immersive travels. And to writing about their trips. Indeed, 'My Epic' type books are so ubiquitous that you might wonder who's left at home to watch the kids. If you read every offering about someones journey of discovery there wouldn't be any time left for your own short hikes.
Still, there are classics in the genre whose insights into what their authors found, both out in the world and within themselves are well worth our time. In this post I've tried to pull a quote or two from a small sampling of 'journey' books. I was looking for bits that touched on motivation (Why) and/or revelation (What). These are exceedingly small sips when you consider that some of these adventures unfolded over many years and filled large volumes in the telling. Hopefully they will whet your appetite and perhaps even inspire a little wander of your own. Herewith, a few words from people who have walked ( and biked, climbed, flown , rode and swam ) the Earth.
Wind, Sand and Stars soars as an ode to the adventurous life.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery recalls the early days of aviation, of flying the mails for the French Aeropostale. That was when the Spanish mountains, the sea, the deserts of North Africa were always waiting for that one malfunction, that one mistake...
"...that Lecrivain not only had not landed in Casablanca
but would never again land anywhere."
Indeed, the Mediterranean finally claimed the author during a 1944 flight. I had a hard time finding quotes from the book. Saint-Exupery, like all good writers shows us his meaning by slowly building images rather than simply telling. Take this portrait of a gruff senior pilot:
"...my broad-shouldered messmate seemed to me strangely
noble; beneath his rough hide I could discern the angel who
had vanquished the dragon."
Or this thought towards the end:
"To come to man's estate it is not necessary to get oneself
killed round Madrid, or to fly mail planes...
But too many men are left unawakened."
Saint-Exupery is passionate about living intensely, accepting risk and danger as the inevitable cost of being fully alive. As I read the other books on my list I got the sense that many had Wind, Sand and Stars as their inspiration, and not without good reason.
The Spray
Before there were airplanes there were boats. In 1895 Captain Joshua Slocum set off from the New England coast in a 41' sloop named the Spray (built in the year 1 according to some wags). It would be three years before he and his little craft returned, becoming the first person to sail solo around the world. Slocum was a no nonsense Yankee seafarer so you might not expect wordy eloquence. Still, Sailing Alone Around the World is a fun read. Here are a few of quotes:
"...the wonderful sea charmed me from the first. At the age
of eight I had already been afloat along with other boys on
the bay, with chances greatly in favor of being drowned."
"...what was there for an old sailor to do? I was born in the
breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps few men have
studied it, neglecting all else."
"Was the crew well? Was I not? I had profited in many ways by the voyage...As for aging, why, the dial of my life was turned back till my friends all said, 'Slocum is young again.'"
"To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go."
Like Saint-Exupery, the life Captain Slocum loved eventually claimed him. He was lost at sea in 1909 but not before leaving us a great tale of adventure.
Web image
Not all journeys are about a search for adventure. Some are simply about survival. Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk - The True Story of a Trek to Freedom is the archetype of the genre. From a Siberian prison camp 'Slav' and several desperate companions use the cover of a blizzard to crawl thru moats and beneath barbed wire before heading south across Russia, Mongolia, the Gobi and the Himalaya. Thousands of miles of the harshest terrain on Earth proved too much for some but it remains a great story of the unconquerable human spirit.
"Nevertheless, the old reindeer man left me with one thought
I was to cherish later: men did attempt to escape."
"What is most important is the deeply felt conviction that
freedom is like oxygen, and I hope The Long Walk is a
reminder that when lost, freedom is difficult to regain."
From Jenkins website
Got an unclimbed mountain in your sights? A river that's never been run. Better get to it before Mark Jenkins does it first. For many years Jenkins penned 'The Hard Way' column for Outside magazine. Month after month he told stories of death defying trips in every dark, unexplored corner of the world. Thoughtful essays that went beyond mere adrenaline red lining, deep into the soul of far flung geography, mysterious cultures and the 'why' of wanderlust. Some of his writing has been collected in a book entitled The Hard Way but before that he had two volumes of travel adventure: Off the Map and To Timbuktu. Here are a few lines from the later:
"Go even if you can't possibly go. Even if it will take a
miracle."
Conversation with his wife:
"Where are you going?"
"We don't know yet."
"What are you doing?"
"We're not sure."
She leaned across the kitchen table and kissed my neck.
"Let's hope you have a clue before you leave."
He's regaling new found African friends with tales around
the campfire:
There's lunging crocodiles, charging hippos and being swept
over a waterfall. Jenkins has them all spellbound. All except
one little toddler.
"He has just learned to walk and the world has become his.
He keeps squirming out of his mother's grasp...
Then someone shouts. The baby is gone. We all spring to
our feet and spin away from the fire and look out into the
desert.
There he is, screaming with laughter, waddling as fast as
he can straight into the dark, straight into the unknown."
"To head toward a star - this only."
- Martin Heidegger
Web image
Looking for real danger? Try writing about adventure travel without including women. I'm not that foolish, so it's time to head to the west Australian Outback. Time to join Robyn Davidson's amazing 1,700 mile camel trek chronicled in Tracks. Reading Tracks feels like sitting at a bar having a beer with Davidson. Like she's your best friend sharing intimacies. She tells such good stories, paints such vivid portraits of people and places. And she seems unflinchingly honest about her experience, herself. For the 'why' of going out there, this is the book.
"I had also been vaguely bored with my life and its repetitions -
the half-finished, half-hearted attempts at different jobs and
various studies; had been sick of carrying around the self-
indulgent negativity which was so much the malaise of my
generation, my sex and my class.
So I had made a decision which carried with it things that I
could not articulate at the time. I had made the choice
instinctively, and only later had given it meaning."
"'Why?' A more pertinent question might be, why is it that
more people don't attempt to escape the limitations imposed
upon them?"
"I wanted to shed burdens. To pare away what was
unnecessary. A process that was literal, in the sense of
constantly leaving behind anything extraneous to my needs,
and metaphorical, or perhaps metaphysical, in the sense of
ridding myself of mental baggage."
"Camel trips do not begin or end, they merely change form." - Web image
Robyn Davidson and Cheryl Strayed seem like soul sisters accidentally separated by an ocean and a generation. Strayed is the author of the 2012 bestseller Wild. In it she tells of finding herself on a long hike (no camels involved). Both 'journey' books go deep into their author's inner lives and both were made into movies.
"A world I thought would both make me into the woman
I knew I could become and turn me back into the girl I'd
once been. A world that measured two feet wide and 2,663
miles long.
A world called the Pacific Crest Trail."
"I had arrived. I'd done it. It seemed like such a small thing
and such a tremendous thing at once, like a secret I'd always
tell myself, though I didn't know the meaning of it just yet."
This whirlwind of travel is enough to tucker out an old blogger. I'm only about half way thru my list of 'going long' books so I think I'll take a break, catch my breath and finish up in the next post. In the meantime take a listen to Steve Winwood. He went so far that he sings I Can't Find My Way Home. Here's a link to the song.
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