The winter solstice has passed and the days are gradually lengthening. Spring is coming and then summer after. It is nearly Valentine’s Day and we have begun our planning for travel. It is what we do in the spring. We get ready for the road.
I confess that I am an ambivalent traveler. By nature, I am a home-body. If not for work, before I retired, and groceries, I might never leave the house. Granted, I enjoy the concept of travel, the pleasure of seeing new places, the comfort in looking back and thinking “I’ve been there.” But, ultimately I am lazy. A book and a fire, or a chair in the sun and I am content.
I am not a people person, which may seem counter intuitive with my choice of careers as a teacher. But, given a choice, I’d spend my time alone, with only my wife and family for company.
I am planning and packing because, borrowing from Abraham Lincoln, Lydia is the better angel of my nature. She sets me in motion, knowing that beyond my apparent sloth is a need to see and do. Because of her, we go to concerts and plays. I resist and I am sure that getting me in motion is a bit like push-starting an M-1 tank. But, once in motion I am always glad she has made the effort. (A teacher once told my parents at a conference that I was a lazy student. This, he said, was not necessarily a bad thing; it was useful in math in helping me find short cuts to solutions. At best it was a left-handed compliment, but he was not entirely wrong.)

There is snow on the ground today, a pleasant change from the usual Oregon rain. It is a day for reading by the fire, not organizing shoes and underwear for storage in the bus. Still, it needs to be done. We don’t travel as lightly as we did when we were younger. Age has its own requirements for travel: pills, CPAP machines, extra blankets and sweaters and such. A sleeping bag on the floor of a tent has been replaced by a queen bed in an RV. It’s not exactly the Buddhist simplicity that Kerouac aspired to, but it is how we travel these days. (I remember a story in the original Whole Earth Catalogue, in which a young hippie wanderer mocked an older RVer who had a TV in his rig, which he watched as he grilled steaks on his BBQ grill. At the time I empathized with the hippie. Times change and so do we, though I hope that the core values of our youth still survive.) We do our best to keep life on the road as simple as we can. Meals in particular are basic, minimal effort affairs. Lunch is often cheese and apples, crackers and a few slices of salami. The close confines of the bus require that we choose clothes, dishes, and cooking utensils with the most utility. Like the pioneers from the east, we carry nothing that is non-essential, though admittedly our definition of essential includes books, popcorn, and a huge pile of CDs.

The day that the tires first touch the highway is only part of the journey, the part in the middle. A trip is a good meal that takes days to plan and hours to create, taste and savor before the actual meal. Along the way one should pause, break off a touch of bread and check the sauce.

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
Kerouac, Dharma Bums
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.
Kerouac
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
John Steinbeck

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot

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