Place

Using a blue pen, and real, honest to God paper, I am trying to think of words to write about "place", as I sit in the back of a run down van. With my friend Cassie driving us to West Virginia.

I'm smiling because ten-thousand movies will never ruin the perfect feeling here. The feeling that comes out of driving, and highway-worthy music playing good and loud.

I think of place, and I think of wanderlust. Especially at this given moment.

I have spent years, it started to get extra itchy when I was nine, wanting to be in some other place than where I was-- almost always home. London, San Francisco, Montana, Alaska, Croatia, Hungary, Nepal, Australia, Japan, Bosnia...someplace else I had either never been, or hadn't been enough. Where I was would only feel right, if I had the freedom to leave it and see the rest of the world.

It used to be only the locations themselves that called to me. I didn't like the journey. I would be stuck in the back of the car, no control over any part of the situation, maybe carsick, and no doubt waiting with the beautiful frustrating impatient of a child who really, really, really, can't wait to get there.

But then my friends grew up and got cars, and my whole life got a little freer.

Then one 3:30 AM night for the first time, my friend Bob said "pick a direction." And we drove and tried to get lost. We didn't get home until 8:30 in the morning, after finding a perfect, real, diner at exactly 6 am.

We did that many times, always in the early morning, when the world was ours.

And once we took a real road trip. We drove for three weeks from Pennsylvania, down through New Mexico, up through California, across to Montana, and home. Three weeks of seeing different highway, and different places.

Maybe the best part was the very first day, only minutes from home. It was a beautiful April day, and I couldn't stop grinning, because we weren't going to turn around in five hours, or five days. We had three weeks of different places to see, and three weeks of highway and music.

Bob and I ended up spending more time on our way somewhere than in any place in particular. But that was beautiful, the feeling of movement, different places every minute, passing by.

I still spend half my life longing for Budapest, London, Zagreb, and the Alaskan wilderness. But maybe more important now is my gut need to be on my way to someplace. Not there yet, just on the way, watching the road names and the highway signs change.