The (Very) Long Road Home

It is still difficult to cross half the world. Take high speed rail and jumbo jets and massive cruise liners and rental cars and throw it all out the window. It is still a difficult thing to do. It is, by comparison, not much a thing when examining the lives of Magellan, Marco Polo, or Darwin. These men and thousands of other lesser-known but equally ambitious explorers, navigators, and cartographers once stood on dry land looking at a port and the sea, having no real idea what was next other than some sort of life or death. In spite of this, they still decided to board a rickety wooden boat and raise the sails and set off to the rhythm of the stars. While things are now more precise and certain, there is still plenty to think about, and I am always reminded that every generation has its people content to remain on shore, and those eager to embrace the storm.

Leaving the Middle East for me was no exception to this rule, and that decision itself should illustrate which of the two people I am. Tens of thousands of miles have been covered since New Years Eve, going here and there and back again, and as any traveler will tell you there is always a potent silence at the end of it all, arriving back where you started, few things having changed, wondering what exactly changed in you and how that is measured. There are so many stories compressed in to this time, most of which I have probably already forgotten, but I have remembered enough to know I am not really surprised by anything anymore. Go from third world poverty in Central America to the surrounding essence of Arabic millionaires at the Souq Waqif, and then one morning wake up in the flat farmlands of good old North Dakota, and then culture shock becomes an obscure concept that other people probably go through but me not so much anymore. 

So my long road home eventually arrived back in the United States, this time in a customs line at JFK International Airport, where an officer, noting my address, discovered I was a Dallas Cowboys "fan." Having been out of the country for many seasons now, I know very little of what has been happening on Sunday afternoons for any team. There was a time in my life where I would spend entire weekends watching football and drinking beer with shitty pizza -- the life of an average university student at a school like mine. Given the present-day circumstances, and the things I have seen, it has all lost a bit of importance. I saw a great photo recently that showed hoards of fans covered in face paint screaming out of their minds at a game and the caption of the photo said, "can you imagine if people cared this much about things that actually mattered?" The benefits of good travel are many, but perhaps this is one simple realization you come to: the quantity of money and emotion and the sheer number of wasted hours that go into those events across the country multiplied by the number of fans, all of this combined could surely find a cure for cancer or build a 21st century car that runs on a bottle of water. My officer asked what he thought our chances were this year, and I responded, "not very good since 1995." He laughed and told me not to say that while handing me my passport. With a fresh admittance stamp, I stumbled forward onto American dirt.

Things felt good and fresh in New York City, coming in late at night on the railroad and watching a full moon shine bright orange on the horizon. I spent a few days wandering the blocks around Union Square, reading quietly in the park, drinking good hot coffees when it rained, thinking about what it would be like to live there and into which neighborhood I would fit best, and then thinking a little about Manhattan Island before Henry Hudson first sailed into New York Harbor in 1609. It was a different place then, before it was gridded and paved and leveled out into the present-day madness. There were streams and marshes and elk. Now it is one of those few places in the world that feel alive at all hours, like it is the center of human everything, a place all the world wants to come at some point in their lives, a place The New Yorker was writing about for all those years before I actually arrived, and for all those reasons and many more it is a place I should probably end up. It is a place that is not for everyone, but it is a place suited for at least a few million, and one day soon I should be one of them.

But my flights unfortunately did not stop there and a new one took me to the Southern lands of my suburban childhood and later the land of my parent's slightly more isolated adolsecence. At a doctor's office later in Bismarck, complaining of a slight discomfort in my side, a nurse told me with a smirk my symptoms resembled something of the realization I was coming to North Dakota for a good while. I have always appreciated North Dakota in small doses, and it is a useful place when one needs to slow down, but it is never a place I can spend a lot of time without getting antsy and thinking about what's next. I am sure it is a great place to grow up and come home to, probably to raise kids and to die in peace, but given the lifestyle I have grown accustomed to, I think I would side with the nurse who has presumedly lived there all her life. In doing so I would join in her not-so-hidden desire to get the hell out from time to time.

Drinking beer and watching football at a Buffalo Wild Wings (just running through the old American motions), my story -- that fact I had just ended a very long and ridiculous adventure -- came up casually in conversation with an assortment of new faces. What followed echoed many talks I have had over the years in more than one country and in more than one language; it always comes back to the same theme. A guy I just met told me my life and his life are complete opposites. He lives five houses down from his parents and does not want to ever leave the town he grew up in. He confessed the thought of being in a place they speak differently is scary, as is being far away from home. He once went years without leaving his North Dakotan city, because there was no need to. I told him, as I have told many before, that there are a million possible ways to live your life that fall somewhere between him and I, and not a single one of those is incorrect. The only thing that matters is if your choices are true to you and not ruled by that fear. I try to not sound preachy. I really do believe that.

Still though, I get skeptical from time to time. I have spent too many quality hours around so many old people with regrets. They too often look longingly back at the days of their youth, catching a glimpse of some amazing things that could have been had they not been obsessed with all the things in life that make sense. We think we have a great concept of forever, and we think we have so much damn time to do everything, but I can't help but feel the opposite; life is too short to simply go through the motions without feeling that sort of inspiration that keeps you up all night. Decide you want something, or decide you don't, but just decide, really decide, dig deep and stay rooted, and be damn sure it's what you want. If my grandmother's cancer, or the hundreds of thousands of other cases that pop up a year, or perhaps even the atrocities in Syria (depending on your connection to the international community) say anything, it's this: have some urgency. You are only damn sure if you are being painfully honest with yourself, and to be that it has to hurt a little.

There has been room for all kinds as long as humans walked on two legs and hunted nomadic animals and got on boats to foreign places when a friend of a friend said the word gold. I believe this is still true, more so in today's world of specialization, and I hope everyone finds what is right for them because then the whole thing is better. I have made decisions some probably find crazy, or unwise, but I don't very much care, because it has been a brilliant time and out of all things, I can say every moment has been something inspired. I was weary as hell on my last flight into Bismarck, watching the Missouri River flow right along as if Lewis and Clark were still out there paddling their canoes. As it landed, one great journey ended. I will rest awhile, sit awhile, think awhile -- who knows how long -- and then I am sure the next adventure will begin.