The Call of the Open Road

 

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road…

-       Walt Whitman

-        

Driving through and around Washington DC, lush green grass and trees on both sides of the road, with a tinge of Autumn color on its way, an aging body at the wheel with an 17-year-old heart, the road before me feeling like the world before me with all its alluring promise, I touched on feelings somewhat buried in my busy, working, e-mail writing, phone-checking life. Old welcome friends reminding me of what was and still might be.

 

Maybe it’s being back East, the place where I actually came of age at 17 years old. Back to the time and place when I considered the world needed some saving, but also was inviting some savoring. The full weight of the task ahead was just a sliver of a guess and graced me with a lightness that would later grow heavier. At 17 years old, I felt that Thoreauvian delight wandering around the woods in Watchung Reservation and later, Glen Helen next to my college. I felt another kind of pleasure answering Whitman’s call of the open road, armed with a scruffy army backpack and my thumb. I certainly savored the various soundtracks both accompanying life’s beckoning invitations, those troubadours of the late 60’s and early 70’s singing it all alive. Now I can hear them again on Spotify with a Bluetooth phone connection instead of the radio or an 8-track player in the car. 

 

Back then, all was promise and possibility. Now the lines on my face and sags of the flesh are imprinted with so many lived stories of how it all actually turned out. Two ends of the same journey of saving and savoring and both with their own particular delights. Still gratefully healthy and free, much less of the world before me, much more of it behind me, but also when fully in the moment now, it doesn’t matter. Certainly less whimpering and complaining and querulous criticisms— well, plenty of the latter, but less attachment to them. Still vulnerable to mood shifts when good fortune passes me by, but stronger conviction that I am my own good fortune and that’s the only thing I can control. I can’t let the Trump sign I saw at the Delaware border bring me down, nor should I count on the Harris-Walz landslide prediction I saw online be the thing that lifts me up. (Though both are understandably of concern!)

 

Today I get back in my blue Kia and head toward my old high school to give a talk tomorrow, another bringing together of my 17-year-old self with this 73-year-old guy. It is a marvelous world. Hail to retirement!