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| Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas. [Photo: D.F.G. Hailson] |
Mark Twain wisely
noted that: “twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things
you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
In Episode 34, I share
some of what it can look like to answer what John Steinbeck
referred to as, “the call of bumdom.” More than four years ago, my husband,
Gene, and I decided to throw off the bowlines, to sail away from the safe
harbor, to explore, to follow our dreams, to discover. Answering the call of
bumdom has launched us into a journey that has taken us to wild places and into
wild company, a journey that has also made of us “Rubber Hobos,” workers at odd
jobs in odd places.
When I began considering an
extended period of travel, it was, in part, because I needed a change. The home
I’d long thought of as a sanctuary was no longer such. I had been deeply
disappointed and derailed by an overturning in my life and I needed distance. I
was physically, emotionally and spiritually depleted and I was no longer
willing to continue in a way of life that was draining the life out of me. I
needed to lay new tracks toward respite, renewal, and relief.
Like Gustave Flaubert, I was
eager to be “transplanted by the winds.” Like Charles Baudelaire, I was
eager to be in the places of departure and arrival, eager to be aboard machines
of motion. Like Edward Hopper, I was seeking the poetry in a train car, the
sanctuary in a coffee shop, the message in a neon sign. Like Alexander von
Humboldt, I was seeking knowledge, an expansion of my understanding of the
world and its workings. Like William Wordsworth, I craved the restorative power
of nature.
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| Gold Beach, Oregon. [Photo: D.F.G. Hailson] |
BUT, ultimately,
foundationally — through and through — what I needed most was the ministry of
the sublime. I needed to hear from God. I wanted to connect with His artistry
in nature and be awed by His power breathed in and through the created order.
My spirit craved healing and I was eager to paint what I learned and saw and
felt and heard and smelled – all that I experienced with every sense and every
fiber of my being — with words and photographs and sketches.
Alain de Botton, author of The
Art of Travel (a book from which I have drawn much inspiration), has
lamented that: “There are some who have crossed deserts, floated on ice caps
and cut their way through jungles but whose souls we would search in vain for
evidence of what they have witnessed.” I didn’t want that to be true of
me; I wanted to BE wherever I was.
But I shouldn’t lead you to
believe that this unconventional life I was to embrace was to be only a serious,
studious search for re-ignition. I was also up for some light-hearted,
boisterous, frolic-laden, delight-filled fun.
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| View from Bright Angel Trail, North Rim, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. [Photo: D.F.G. Hailson] |
As my husband and I made plans to set off for parts unknown, I was filled with anticipation and I was eager to embrace the vulgar realities of wayfaring. Like Mr. Toad and his
friends from The Wind in the Willows, I delighted in considering what
the open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows and the
rolling downs might hold in the way of adventure.
And so, as 2010 was drawing to
a close, my husband Gene and I sold our home in Pennsylvania and set out
to gather experiences–outside of our experiences–on a road trip across the
United States. Adding the thirty states through which we've wayfared over the last four years, we've now visited every state as well as every province and territory in Canada save for Nunavut.
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| Young gators, Big Cypress National Preserve, Ochopee, Florida. [Photo: D.F.G. Hailson] |
Along
the way we’ve met fascinating people, from goldpanners and a family of wild
mushroom pickers in Oregon to a moonshiner in Louisiana, from a mariachi band
in Texas to Gullah-Geechee sweetgrass basket weavers in South Carolina. We’ve
spent delight-filled days marveling at glorious natural wonders from the
majestic Grand Canyon in Arizona to the hoodoo-filled Bryce Amphitheater in
Utah, from the lush and soul-soothing Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida
to the barren salt flats of Badwater in California’s Death Valley.
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| "The Girls," Badlands, Interior, South Dakota. [Photo: D.F.G. Hailson] |
