Today was another rainy day in Prescott. I had the day off yet woke up at the usual time, around six am. I drank my regular two cups of black coffee and met a friend at the Wild Iris for two more cups and free conversation. Then, after puttering around on my bike through the rain-drenched dirt paths near Granite Creek, I stopped off at the library to replenish my book supply. A few weeks ago I came upon the travel section and have been indulging in it ever since, it’s like my own personal self-help section. Along with the guidebooks for places like Indonesia and Nigeria there are non-fiction books where authors confess their longings for all things surreal and unfamiliar. It’s like they wrote those books with me in mind. I feel less strange when I realize there are other people that would trade security and comfort for a crowded night bus through the Peruvian mountains. Today I snagged a book by Carl Hoffman called “The Lunatic Express”, where the author goes across the world via the “most dangerous buses, boats, trains and planes”. One might wonder why anyone would want to throw themselves out into the wide open sea like that. But I think I understand the authors need for that adrenaline infused style of traveling. That giddy-alive feeling only comes to me when I’m outside the confines of normalcy, outside the realms of the ordinary, and especially outside the realms of comfort. The problem that I am presented with now is that my life is no longer quite as satisfying as last year. Like nicotine addict needs her cigarette, I need that adrenaline kick that Prescott isn’t quite delivering. Despite its wonderful people and beautiful hiking trails and the brilliant Granite Mountain in the distance, I need more. I need to know I’m going to get that fix soon or I don’t think I can make it through the year. In fact, I know I won’t. I’ll become that drunken rambler at the bar that won’t shut up about the annoying American tendency towards materialism and career advancement.
By no means am I a world traveler, have I only been to a handful of countries and I’ve never been away for more than two months at a time. Yet the thirst for adventure increases each time I step off a plane to someplace new. You only need a glimpse of those places to want more. Carl Hoffman captures what I’m trying to express quite nicely, “Home became ever more strange to return to. The two lives are jarring; one day to be in southern Sudan in a war zone in heat and flies amid gunshot victims, the next at a PTA meeting. One day drifting down the Amazon, the next vacuuming the house and buying milk at Safeway” (Hoffman, 14). Thus, I plan my next escape; I already booked a one-way ticket to Bangkok, Thailand for next May.