“I think that it is time for you to wander. The essence of wandering is that the exact outcome of it cannot be known…Though the geographic destination is not clear, the purpose of wandering is very clear….
“To bum around. To hitchhike, ride freighters, do odd jobs, wash pots and pans, pick fruit, clean fish, be a deck hand, work on the railroad, all the time watching the world and observing the rootedness of others, watching the backyards with their laundry on the lines drying in the sun, walking the aisles of the train, waiting to meet strangers….
“What do you know of your father's life? Is there a period that he sometimes refers to, a period of restlessness or trouble, when he did not know where he was going? Does he sometimes get this look in his eye, like whatever it was he set out to do is not completely finished, like there are things he's not telling you? Maybe there are mysteries of pain he wants to protect you from. Doesn't he know that's not possible or desirable? Perhaps he himself did not complete his wandering, and is protecting himself against the truths that emerge when we wander and give ourselves over to the forces of soul.
“Some people look back on such times-wandering-as dark times. And they may be dark. But they are also essential. It is not by accident that we get into trouble, that our lives are not beautifully ordered.
“It doesn't seem very grown-up, this wandering business. And yet it is essential to full maturity.
“I remember when the idea of "the road" arose in my heart. "The road." Bob Dylan and the road. A man on a highway with a guitar. A man on a road. Highway 61. Somehow in my adolescence I became aware that there was a road and I had to be on it, and the fact that I had no idea where the road led was part of the fascination. And this was a distinct change. This was not childhood. This was not a childish wish for ice cream. This was the call of the wild...
“[So]when I was 15 or 16, it became important to find a road and travel it. There was Bob Dylan with his guitar on the road, discovering poetic mysteries in the clubs of New York; there was Bob Dylan who'd come from Minnesota, a nowhere place, such as where I was from.
“So there was this urge to find something real. To be real, this thing had to be unknown; it had to be discovered. It could not come easily or as a gift. It could not be bought. I had to go on the road to find it.
“I remember a banquet. It was like we were in Beowulf. We had a banquet at Tracy Wald's house in Miramar. Mike Sirola and I were like kings and brothers, going out into the world in his Dodge van. We were going to discover what was there. We were going on the road.
“The road was quiet then. There were no cellphones. When you were gone you were gone.
“So we got gone. We made it maybe 75 miles and blew the head gasket.
“That's another story.
“It all fits. It's so clear. I know when you read this you will realize that what you are feeling is natural and good. You can't know everything that you have to do. You just have to go."
-Cary Tennis
The picture is from somewhere in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, I forget exactly where I was, but the clouds were in the meadows that day, too.
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