Traveling Alone

I discovered early in my life as a nomad that if I insisted on always having travel companions my freedom to come and go as I pleased would be severely compromised. Even close friends have their own lives to lead, and their visions will not always align with yours. In fact, I believe that waiting for someone to go with me delayed my initial departure back in the 1970s for months if not years. I had a good friend who also liked to travel; before I went anywhere he had already been to Europe and Mexico and other places. I thought we might be able to leave together. We had rented a duplex in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle and had lots of escapades with women, drugs, and drink; however, he took off again and I was left behind and the only way I could extricate myself from the doldrums in which I was enmeshed was to get rid of my car and the apartment and get out to a freeway entrance all alone and stick out my hitchhiking thumb. That was the start of my traveling adventures. From that moment I roamed the world for thirty-five years before I returned to the United States to live. And by that time I had changed. No matter where I ended up, even back in my hometown of Seattle, it was just the latest step in my life's journey. I had become a perennial nomad.

Lately I have come to realize that whether I am in Kathmandu, Nepal, or Seattle, Washington, USA, the same principles apply. I am an anomaly in that though I was born and raised here, I have but recently returned. Almost all of my relatives and acquaintances in the area have lived here all their lives. While I was off gallivanting around the world, they were nurturing relationships with people they have known for many decades. In contrast, I know few people in the area. My closest friends have died, and my adult sons have all moved away to other parts of the country. I do not mean to present this as a lament; it is merely an observation that I should not wait until I find companions before I venture forth out of the apartment. If I want to explore the city, I have to do it on my own. When I began my hitchhiking adventures, I did it with the mindset that I would go where I wanted to go and do what I felt compelled or called to do. If I found companionship, great; if not, so be it. I would not let that hinder me. Once again I recall the words of Walt Whitman, the perennial nomad who spoke so clearly for all of us, from "Song of Myself": "Each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, my left hand hooking you round the waist, my right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself." This holds true here in Seattle as well as anywhere. Shall I cower in my apartment because there is no one to accompany me, or should I venture forth to the open road - or at least the parts of it I can access via public transportation? After all, a city is full of roads. Once, early on in my journeys, I met a man who told me that cities were traps, networks of mazes within which travelers get lost. He told me to avoid cities and never go near them; he warned me that city dwellers were prisoners and only those who stayed on the move were free. An extremist, to be sure. And yet he had a point. What he failed to perceive, though, is that cities are mini-universes within which one can discover multitudes of unique places. The roads in cities may be more intricate and complex, but they too lead to unknown treasures of mysteries and relationships and experiences. Therefore if these are the roads before me, I will explore them.