The Art of Wandering

I mentioned to a friend recently that my life was more like a collection of short stories than a novel. How many times have I changed the scene, setting, props to re-create what appears to be a whole new life? Probably more than is good for me. But here we go again...

Six months ago my life was as busy as anyone else’s. Full-time work, a long commute, various volunteer activities, a garden to tend. Bit by bit it has all drifted away as I have unravelled a life that took two years to build, and which had turned out remarkably satisfying. Now all there is left to do is get ready for this trip.

The story of how I got from there to here is long and convoluted. It started out as a whimsical conversation that turned serious and eventually moulded into a five year plan to return to the States to be near by parents for a while. That became a three year plan, then a year. It’s now down to nine months, a perfect gestation period for giving birth to our new lives in Port Townsend, U.S.A. in April next year.

But first there’s a country to see. Collectively, Johan and I have sixty years of life in Australia (37 and 23 respectively). We’ve both become naturalised – legally, but also in spirit. The red earth and wide open spaces of Australia are deep in our blood and it’s not easy to leave. What better way to honor our time here than to journey through the heart of this big, bold land.

From our home in Myalup, we’ll venture northeast, towards the goldfields of Kalgoorlie, then north to Laverton, a dusty, derelict town on the edge of the vast desert. The Outback Way is a 2750km trek across the Great Central Road. Three-quarters of it is unpaved, becoming bitumen through the heavily touristed areas of Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) and Alice Springs in the dead centre of Australia. When we come out the other end, in Winton, Queensland, we’ll let serendipity be our guide. We may be gone a few weeks – or a few months. Our only deadline is to board a plane on a day in April, which will take us away from this, our second home, back to the land of my birth.

As fate would have it, a CD turned up in the post just before we left. A joint birthday present to us from Johan’s daughter, Noonja, Songs from the Road chronicles Leonard Cohen’s recent year and a half world tour. Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, wrote an essay for the CD jacket cover. An ode to Cohen’s poetic largess and nomadic spirit, “The Art of Wandering” suggests that “itinerancy refreshes and expands the spirit”, (as does Cohen’s music). I like that. It’s as good an explanation as any for why my life has always been on the move, changing its cloak when things get too stale or staid.

The introduction to “The Art of Wandering” provides a poignant reminder of why we travel, and how important it is, on this upcoming road trip, for us to stay attuned to the nuances of this beautiful land and whatever experiences it has in store. I offer it here as a blessing on our journey.

The road is not a line between places; it is a place between places, a place of its own. You cannot understand the ravishments of the road unless you overcome the logistical way of looking at things, which is perhaps the most powerful impediment that our hustling way of life puts in the way of experience. Since we cling to a mainly instrumental view of the road, we have forgotten how to be travellers and we are tourists instead, sitting still before the window and watching the world speed past, when in fact we are the ones who are speeding and it is the world that is still, for those who possess the capacity for stillness.

We are too enamoured of destinations. We hunger too much for arrival. We treat the road as an interval between meanings, an interregnum between dispensations, and so we are blinded to the richness of meanings and dispensations in the road itself. If departure is the past and arrival is the future, then the road is the present, and there is nothing more spiritually difficult or spiritually rewarding than learning to live significantly in the present. This is accomplished by a schooling in transience, and the road is such a school. Almost as powerful as the sea and the sky, the road is an emblem of immensity: the horizon, which is the promise of a release. From the stretch of even the most ordinary road, you may infer a suggestion of infinity.