40 Days in the Wilderness

The car is packed. I’ve kicked the tires. And I have more trail mix than one man can possibly eat. I’m soon leaving Los Angeles for six weeks on a solo road trip through the iconic and mythic American West. Utah. Idaho. Wyoming. Montana. Colorado. Utah. Then back to California. That’s that plan: to return in time to start my fall semester of school. It turns out to be, exactly, a 40 day wandering in the wilderness.

I’m not disconnecting completely. During this pandemic, I’ve been working from home, and there is no sign of returning to the office anytime soon. So I’ve decided to take advantage of this unique “work from anywhere” time by hitting the road for a good long time. I’m traveling solo, and staying at Air B&Bs along the way. I’ve planned the trip in such a way I can continue to work remotely while getting a long break from the glimmer and madness of Los Angeles. I’m leaving it behind for time in the desert, in the mountains, and in the wide-open spaces that allow a person to think, feel his smallness, and perhaps crack open the rusty vault of a weary heart. 

The philosopher Martin Buber said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” I believe this to be true. The purpose of travel is not to see the expected. It is not to tick the boxes on a Rolodex of waypoints. The purpose of journey is to step across the threshold of the ordinary and enter the unknown, a place that is elusive while living in the comforts of everyday life. It is about the dumbfounding of one’s ego and the awakening to something other.

Why am I going? I’m not entirely sure. It feels right. It makes sense. I’m too proud to admit that it may be a reaction to a culmination of disappointments or some sort of middle-life crisis. Or perhaps I’m simply bored. But these explanations are far too simplistic and do not account for the complexity of a soul’s longing. I don’t believe travel needs an explanation, for the journey is reason enough. 

As I’ve been preparing for this trip, I’ve been pondering this poem by Rilke:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rainer Maria Rilke Book of Hours, I 59