Day: One
Location: Cambria, California
Mileage: 323.0

I love the word. Wander–similar to wonder in both sound and meaning. But the short “a” sound takes us on a journey outward rather than deep inside the “o” of wonder. While wandering, we encounter the word lust unexpectedly, like a mysterious woman at a bar who catches our eye. The childlike joy of wandering converges with adult longing. We lust for wandering, we wander lustfully, and the road seduces us into being up and gone.

It is fall break, and after spending Friday clearing out my email and doing some other work, Penelope and I headed west this morning along the 10 to the Pacific Coast Highway. We began with a hearty road breakfast at Macduff’s, my breakfast hangout (on those rare occasions when I’m not at the coffee shop for my white chocolate mocha) and a venue whose name holds a special place in my memory. A quick trip to the office to write a recommendation letter for Scout, then west on the 10 to the Ventura Highway (cue America music) and the PCH. I felt the gravity pulling me to stay, but the wanderlust overcame it, and I was happy to be on the road again. It was a gorgeous day in southern California, not a cloud in the azure blue sky and a cool 65 degrees.

I have been so out of touch on email, phone, and the blog that I decide to start calling people to catch up with them. I call nearly everyone for whom I have a phone number in my iPhone contacts. I had talked to Jerry the night before, so I begin of course with St. Judy of Ohio, who had in her prescient way, already called me at Macduff’s and left a message. You see, St. Judy just knows things, and it can freak you out if you think about it too long. But I just smiled as I opened up the iPhone and thought of how she should be the first person I called anyway. She just had a pin put in her finger to deal with some join pain but is recovering well. I told her how to operate her iBook with voice commands, and now she bosses “Dorothy” around by telling her to get her email and look up web sites. She is well.

Most people I call, of course, have lives, so they are unaware of my new road trip, and how happy I am to be reconnecting with them. They are forgiven. I miss all the St. Mary’s, but I connect with Lukas, and we have a wonderful discussion. He’s at an Appleby’s in Knoxville, and images of Ricky Bobby from Talledaga Nights come to mind. We speak of work and travel, of his January trip to Cody, Wyoming, and of my future trips back east. And can I say how happy I am to use the phrase “back east”? I’ve been waiting over ten years to say that and mean it because I am now “out west.” Milton is back east, and I connect but it’s with one of the little ones, who tells me that his dad is making him a sandwich. I know better than to interrupt when two boys are being fed, so I sign off with good wishes and hope Milton will call me back. Scout is not available, but St. Judy of Boston is, and we have a good and long conversation about work-related matters. She is on her way to Maine, so we are headed in opposite directions. Still, the connection is strong. I get to talk to Brad between his trips running Henry around Boston, and he sounds well. Dad is, of course, not home, but I leave him a message and wonder how many children of 87 year-old fathers can’t reach them because they are always out running around. I call Anna in DC and ask her where her paper is because it is late. She is quiet and asks me to repeat myself. I say “This is your professor, and I’m waiting for your paper. It’s late.” She hesitates again but then recognizes my voice and starts laughing. We have a good talk, and I have a text message on my iPhone right now from her asking me if I want to talk about Walt Whitman. Is she kidding?

As I turn north onto the 1, Milton calls me back, and we have one of those warm and generous conversations that leaves you light and happy at the end. He is on sabbatical and full of grace and joy. He has decided to spend his semester learning to cook and hauling the boys around to their various functions. It sounds like a noble calling, and he also tells me that he is working out a lot. We discuss our identities as professors because he has lost his momentarily because of the sabbatical, and we contemplate our chosen profession and how lucky we are to practice it. There is much laughter and grace between the Pacific Ocean and the Mississippi River as I travel up the PCH, and he watches Marcus’s baseball game. We get cut off after a while because I am getting into a remote part of the PCH, but before that I call out the names of the towns and state parks so that he can reminisce about his own sacred journeys on this path. Afterwards, I smile and look left toward that immense ocean lying there like a creation myth about to be told. I smile a lot these days, and why shouldn’t I? My life is good, and I have friends and family who love me and will listen to me as I drive up the PCH. And I get to say PCH like the locals do because I am a local.

My last call is, appropriately enough, St. Eileen. She has just returned from grocery shopping, and I can hear the love in her voice when she realizes it is her wandering Aristaeus calling her on a Saturday evening. St. Eileen serves the mother role for me when she’s not being a dear friend and colleague, and I feel like one of her sons who has called just when she needed to hear him. We speak warmly and catch up with our life and work. Again, the love between the Pacific and the Atlantic is palpable.

I found a lovely little motel here in Cambria. A Boston Red Sox banner on one of the doors caught my eye, and I got the last room for the night. The manager said “Watch this” and flipped the switch to turn on the “No” on the vacancy sign. I said, “I always wanted to see that happen,” and we both smiled. The room is simple and a bit dumpy but clean. It’s perfect. And so am I. How lucky I am indeed–to be a teacher, to be alive, to be on the road, to still have wanderlust. All day I kept thinking of a line from a little-known poem by an obscure French poet (this too is part of the profession I have chosen). It’s a beautiful little construction and fits today perfectly:

.…followers of trails and of seasons, breakers of camp in the little dawn wind, seekers of watercourses over the wrinkled rind of the world, o seekers, o finders of reasons to be up and be gone…. –St. John Perse