I recently made my very first submission for publication in a magazine. My piece was not published. While I was hopeful, I’m not that disappointed. It was my first try and the article they did publish was well-written and fit the magazine’s format and vibe better than mine. I am posting the essay below and looking at this as an opportunity to get back to writing in my blog more often. The hard part – getting started – has been made easy by this ready-made post. Hurrah for silver linings!

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“Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost” – J.R.R. Tolkien

I’d never seen a wild boar before. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever even seen a garden-variety farm pig in person. Delighted with my lucky discovery, I moved nearer to see the giant, fuzzy-headed creature from close-up. It was beautiful in a scruffy, rough-and-tumble sort of way. Primarily brown, it had a shock of short black hair like a horse’s mane and a tangle of blonde hair on its chin. Its ears were downright cute. Snapping pictures, I got within a few feet of the animal before I noticed the gasps behind me.

fuzzy!

My partner and I had hired a guide to help us navigate Taman Negara which, at 130 million years, is the oldest rainforest in the world. I glanced back to see the poor man looking worried and dismayed. He and my partner were standing stock still and gesturing wildly, but decidedly non-aggressively, for me to step away from my hirsute new friend. When I turned back, the boar was meandering off, snuffling at the ground for something to eat. Relieved, the men set about scolding me for my recklessness. Didn’t I know how dangerous feral animals are? Especially wild boars? I maintain to this day that I was in no danger. It was clear to me that pig was completely indifferent to my presence.

These types of incidents have not been uncommon in my life. Since I was a child, I have had a certain restlessness. My preferred method of getting to sleep as a kid was to lay in bed imagining all the things that were taking place around the world in that moment: a baby was being born in India; a toddler fell off his swing in Ireland; a couple was getting married in Africa; a girl had her first taste of ice cream in Japan; a boy flipped off his bike and broke his arm in Oklahoma. The world was big and amazing and full of people, environments and experiences totally different from mine. I wanted to see them all.

bye bye, piggy

I come by this restlessness honestly. You may recall a spate of articles last year about DRD4, a protein-coupled Dopamine receptor popularly referred to as the “Wanderlust Gene.” My parents both seem to carry the Wanderlust Gene, or whatever human impulse it is that compels people to explore the foreign and far-away. It motivated each of them to escape their small hometowns – his, a rural farming town in the hills of Kentucky; hers, a tiny village in Ireland – and to travel, courtesy of their respective country’s military. The two adventure-seekers met thousands of miles from home, in Singapore. My elder brothers followed the same track, enlisting young and traveling abroad before settling down. One now lives a couple hours from our childhood home; the other resides on the opposite side of an ocean.

My travels took a different route. Thanks to my parents, I enjoyed several cross-country car trips through the United States when I was growing up. They also took me on visits my mom’s family in Ireland, and to England and France. By the time I left for college, I was well-traveled and eager for more. When I was 19, my best friend and I drove to California during summer break. We took a circuitous path, hitting all the sights that piqued our interest. We hiked into the Grand Canyon with only a can of soda each, ignoring warnings that quarts of water were necessary for the distance we intended to travel. I clearly remember my friend reading the big warning sign, then shrugging and saying “Eh, we’re young.”  Painful lesson learned. Twenty-seven years later, I still carry a large water bottle with me everywhere I go.

Preparing to descend into parched oblivion. Why yes, I am wearing a long wool vest.

We broke our only road rule (no hitchhikers) on our first day out. We climbed a mountain waterfall in Yosemite. We ran into some hippies and followed the Grateful Dead for a couple days. We heard fantastic tales from other travelers around campfires at night. Having brought virtually no money, aside from the few times we crashed with distant relatives or friends of friends, we camped at night. We’d brought the hot pot from my dorm room and, using electrical outlets in rest areas, we survived on a case of powdered instant soup we brought from home. For showers, we lucked upon well-appointed campgrounds and broke into the physical education buildings of colleges that were closed for the summer.

Caroline and I at the California Redwoods.

We made it to our destination, Venice Beach, so we could lay on the beach where Jim Morrison slept. After a couple days, we bid farewell to the Pacific Ocean, turned around and did it all in reverse, reaching the Atlantic a couple weeks later. It was a spur-of-the-moment trip, ill-conceived and drastically underfunded, but it was one of the best times of my life. It set the stage for an adult life full of adventures. I have since backpacked across Europe several times, including one trip I did solo. I’ve car-tripped to almost every U.S. state, including Alaska (twice) and driven the Al-Can Highway across Canada.

I stayed put long enough to attend law school, then sold my house and traveled around the world for a year before I began my practice. I saw Shanghai’s Pearl Tower, Xian’s Terracotta Soldiers, and the Great Wall of China. I explored Angkor Wat in Cambodia; the Pyramids in Egypt; and saw 10,000-year-old cave paintings in Borneo. I watched Kabuki in Japan, Wayang Kulit shadow puppet plays in Malaysia, Vietnamese water puppetry in Hanoi, and the Kecak Fire Dance in Bali. I traveled on trains and buses; tuk-tuks and motorcycles; feluccas and canoes; cruise ships and airplanes. I’ve even depended on elephants and camels to get me from Place A to Place B.

Venice Beach, 1989

I’ve been extraordinarily privileged to have realized my childhood dream of seeing the world and the amazing, beautiful, diverse people who inhabit it. I have yet to travel to a place where I failed to learn something new. In recent years, though officially settled down until my kids are grown, I’ve enjoyed family trips to great cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Seattle. Last summer, we took the kids on a month-long whirlwind tour through Ireland and England, and to Bruges, Paris, and Amsterdam. I can’t imagine my life without travel. There are still so many more places I have yet to see, people I want to meet, and lessons I want to learn. I look forward to whatever adventure comes next.