Wanderlust

The word for today is WANDERLUST. I chose the word earlier, but it is a bit funny, because I struggled to get myself off the couch and over to the computer to write. For a couple of hours this evening, I was content to sit in front of the television surrounded by my animal companions and the usual cast of cable news characters. Throughout the day I thought of silly ideas, a novel with a bawdy main character named Wanda Lust or a fairy flying around sprinkling aphrodisiac powder on random people with her wand o' lust. My WANDERLUST is my passion for exploring, the spark inside me that means no matter how dark or paralyzing my depression may become I do not completely or permanently lose my wonder. For me, my WANDERLUST is my lust for life.

As a child I got to go places. Not exotic places like Africa or India or China. I've still never been to any of these, and would still like to go--to Africa especially. I grew up in the suburbs of NYC in a community that was established during Colonial times along a wooded hillside. From my family's sunroom window we looked down on railroad that led to NYC, a small river and over to another community on the opposite hillside. We could get in the car and go to the Atlantic Ocean or cross the great Hudson River and continue north to the Catskill mountains. I saw a change of landscape, a change of scenery. I knew how to find the space of the mountains or the sea.

During the summer and on school vacations I visited friends who had summer houses in Maine or Martha's Vineyard. In fourth grade my best friend moved to Ithaca, NY; I visited her twice a year throughout high school, often taking the bus from the Port Authority in Manhattan to the western part of NY near the Pennsylvania border. In my own neighborhood, I remember walking up a long, steep hill from town and turning the corner to my family's street. If I hadn't gone anywhere in several months the repetition, walking up the same hill, turning on the same block, bothered me. Repetition still bothers me.

I love maps. I love using them to help me find my way. When I moved to Maine in 1989 I took myself on weekend excursions with my newly purchased Delorme atlas to explore my new state. I drove from the coast to the Sunday River ski resort near New Hampshire, not to go skiing, but just so I'd know how to get there. I explored the winding peninsulas that make the actual coastline miles longer than the relatively straight Route One and came to know which one had the best lobster pound or the most solitary lighthouse or the most colorful wildflowers. I graduated from the coast to the inland woods and searched out swimming holes where only locals knew to pull off the road and take a dunk.

Moving to the Chicago area was hard. I loved being on the road, heading towards the midwest, especially taking time to walk across the Niagara River and see the falls from the Canadian side, but I felt swallowed crossing the Indiana tollway over to Chicago. During my first expeditions in my current home state, I could not get over how many strip malls on the thoroughfares that extended west in every town from Evanston north. Was TJ Maxx on Dempster or Church? Was Target on Howard or Oakton? The Office Depot, the Petco. These were the landmarks in my new area.

Some weekends, the wanderlust prevailed. I got in the car and drove to Iowa, just to see the Mississippi River or to Wisconsin just to see and feel some hills. I began to wander north and west on a regular basis through Lake County into McHenry where horse farms and forest preserves still survived along with ominous housing developments. The farther I drove the more it felt like home, like Maine, where I might find a neighborhood swimming hole or a rural farmstand.

When I have the WANDERLUST I get in my car and drive--north usually. My true north. Some people feed their wanderlust in cities, discovering historic buildings and budding neighborhoods. I need nature, I need space, I need something that looks familiar and different all at once. I need something that was created by a passion that didn't come from man. Then I am happy.