Yondering

"I gift my heart to the bend in the road and off I go a yondering"

One of the first things I can remember developing as part of my
personality is a very strong sense of wonder-lust. Once upon a time
the back yard was an entire new and unexplored world every single
time I tottled into it. And when that world was mapped out and
explored for all it's worth my parents would let me wonder to the
thicket patch that sat beyond the wide world that was just grass and
trees.

The thicket offered all sorts of new shadowy hideaways and a few new
friends. Rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, and the oddest blackbirds
with red circles on their wings. Noisy little creatures those are!

The thicket trails were once long and twisted and one could scarcely
walk through them without a good poke or irritated scratch from the
thorny walls that forbid you to wonder off the beaten path. I swear
that there were places in that little thicket patch that even the
rabbit wouldn't go.

It wasn't long before the thicket, like the back yard was no longer
big enough for my imagination. So the boundaries of the world were
pushed further back, all the way across the open field, across the
rail road tracks, to the woods that set about half a mile away.

Over the next two or three summers their was many battles (against
trolls who wanted to take over the village, who I alone had to fend
off with little more than a dull pocket knife and my first Daisy b-b
gun) and countless explorations into an ever changing world where the
only trails were those made by deer.

On and on it goes. The world kept on getting bigger and bigger and
before I knew it I was wondering off to the far side of the county
and exploring every nook and cranny along the way. I spent up most of
my youth and adolescence yondering. Always wanting and almost needing
to see what was over yonder. A few good things came about from my
wonder-lust. I was so busy exploring the wide world that just kept
getting wider that I missed the grand opportunity to explore drugs
and sex with my classmates who's world didn't go quite as far as mine
did. I never even got the understanding of such things as they did.
All I understood was that the wood on the horizon was green and had
dark places in it that needed explored much more than the dark places
that all my classmates explored. I ended up with an ignorant disgust
for the life and times of drugs, alcohol, and all the trappings and
dangers of adolescence. One that followed me into adulthood. And if
one could see my reaction to such things the depth of those
opinionated roots clearly run deep. It also made me a bit anti-social
when it comes to large groups of strange and rather stupid people. I
would rather be talking to a rabbit.

The world has gotten much bigger since the back yard and thicket
patch. And every time I see a forest or pretty picture of a horizon I
have a longing to just get out and walk into it. To leave the hard
concrete world behind and just walk into mother natures painting.

There have been times and adventures when I would walk on and on for
three or four day stretches with nothing more than a day pack. I
never took much along with me in that old bag but it was always full
when I finally found my way back. Hard telling what would be in it
from one adventure to the other. Everything from sticks and stones to
blackberries and flowers. I always paid attention to the flowers and
carried an old book along with me that I have never read for the sole
purpose of pressing whatever collection of flowers I gathered in it
so that they wouldn't get crushed somewhere along the way. It wasn't
too many summers before that old book was worn and stained with all
the real life pictures that I had added to it's musty pages.

My last adventure was in a boat. Traveling down one of the many
tributaries in my area. Again I was on a path less traveled on that
little adventure. But the places that I saw were beyond anything I
had imagined.

The creek is a shallow one with heavy rocks on the bottom and
limestone sheets that sometimes run for half a mile or so. The creek
runs through mostly wooded areas so the banks are always lined with
shadowy trees that keep the air about the creek cool and clean. But
the greatest detail of the rolling scene was from where the waters
have washed away the soil around the creek side roots of the old
trees. The polished and swirling patterns of the roots make millions
of fist sized caves where one could swear fairies dwell and no one
would argue upon looking at them. A muse further brought into the
realm of reality near dark when the fireflies play in and out of them
and the entire world is decorated with their glitter.

I've tried to share the pictures of my many journeys in words and
rhymes from time to time but it's never the same. And little more
than a sigh comes from my mind when I tell people of the laces I have
seen that sometimes lie just off the road and they don't want to see
it too. Driving is easier these days. Paved roads are smoother and
you don't have to put any effort into your travels aside from
pressing on a gas peddle. That is this worlds version of adventure.
Explored the paved and concrete where millions of other people have
already been and be content with that. No need to visit the forest or
travel the river when the road will do just fine. No need to actually
walk into the picture when one can see it just fine from the window
of a car. And the only exciting thing that too many people look
forward to and are ready to walk for is a bar room on the weekend.

In an odd way I'm sort of glad that so many of them do stay on the
roads, in their cars, and off into the stale bar rooms full of smoke
and greasy air. It keeps my world clean and inviting. The perfect
reprieve from concrete life and sour dispositions.

The sad twist is that they still wonder just as they always have why
I go yondering.

(Angel Snowden 2006)