Wandering

With the determination of a Muscle Beach body builder, the pale green lizard performed pushups on tiny arms, intending to draw admiration from an adoring female. Instead, with no comely female Reptilia in sight, it drew only my attention, as it pushed hard up and down against a warmed rock. The superheated West Texas summer attracted few visitors. As we hiked along a nearly indecipherable rocky path, the sun baked both the lizard and ourselves. Still, we bet against the midday scorch. The vast desert would provide the wandering adventure we sought.

Beginning our trek at midday just as the thermometer eclipsed one hundred degrees, we realized we were out of our element. Carrying no water with us, we firmly cemented our novice status. Never mind, it would be a quick hike. Upon returning to our car at its completion, freezing air conditioning would await us. So we tripped onward, energized that we were the lone brave souls wandering through this hostile world. Occasionally, a surprised rattlesnake hastily retreated across our trail. Jackrabbit scat baked along the stones marking the trail’s edge, though we noticed the trail markers growing increasingly rare and random. Once reassuring, the pathway eventually disappeared altogether. We searched for clues. Was this a stone arrangement pointing forward, or the burial marker of previous hikers, wanderings that would prove to be their final wilderness hike? Five miles into our hike, we were lost, so what to do next? Should we soldier onward hoping to discover the markers again, or would we attempt an uncertain recovery and retrace our steps? With no water, no trail, and 105 degrees of scorching heat, we were like wandering Jews—minus the water from the rock, the manna, and Moses or Joshua.

By definition, wanderings stretch boundaries and challenge limits. Good wanderings hold adventures and untold stories, yet they can be scary and hold danger. Songs are written in their honor:

“My father was a wanderer,

And it’s also in my blood,

So I happily wander as long as I can

And I wave with my hat

Valeri, valera,

Valeri, valera ha ha ha ha ha,

Valeri, valera,

And I wave with my hat.”

Frankly, it sings much better in the original German lyrics. Nonetheless, the song accurately describes my own father. When he passed away last year, aged 106, my Artist-Father proved to be a wanderer to the end. Left-brain required tasks were not his thing. Without the aid of a check-writing coach, he would stare uncomprehendingly at his checkbook. But even though aged, by changing his mental channel to his impassioned world of art, he would defy gravity, rise and hover over his wheelchair, balance against the walker that held his paint palette, and stab at his wall-hung oil paintings. Brush in hand, he would improve them yet again! Precarious, yes. Inhibited, no. Dad never learned to stay on the beaten track or, for that matter, off his little apartment’s walls.

Can we recall the last time we wandered off the beaten track? Perhaps to our loss, many of us learned early on to stay ruthlessly on track and to avoid coloring, painting, or wandering outside the lines.

I recently installed a 100-watt solar panel on the roof of our 17-foot camping trailer that inhabits the driveway. Thus equipped, she can charge her battery unaided. It was a sort of “put a ring on it” moment, lending our relationship full empowerment. Now she can hum and buzz with glorious self-generating power, our energized equal as we wander roads, whether paved or dirt. I felt I had breathed new wandering life into our little Pinocchio.

Of course, our tiny trailer offers no equivalency to the wanderings of bold explorers. Instead, she provides us with our-scale wanderings, helping us to dial in randomized mixes of people, places and events. Sometimes, we are led on a leisurely stroll through the woods beneath ancient oaks with deeply scarred bark, moss-covered stones cradling a brook’s clear and crisp waters. At other times, our trailer delivers us into a different kind of wandering—an unpredictable Vitamix concoction of unexplored places and previously unknown faces. They are random wanderings, though afterwards we wonder if they were indeed very random. Long after these events occur, the retelling begins with, “Do you remember when…” and the warm joy of familiarity tickles our brains once again. We embrace these wanderings as being somehow sacred, each retelling resurrecting a precious, sweet nectar.

Our hiking path having disappeared in the vast West Texas desert, we rambled blindly on, sunbaked and lost, our wandering adventure grown not so sweet! By now, with sun blazing and deep concern setting in (yes, we might call it “panic”), I happened to recall one steady feature during our hours-long wandering mishap: for miles behind us, a lone utility line had bisected the cloudless sky. I now recalled observing it even from the now-distant plot where we had parked our car. I surmised that we could now follow that power line, straight as a prickly pear thorn, leading us back to our trail’s beginning and the safety of our car. And so it did. Found again! Joy and relief at being alive!

There is a counterpart to wandering: restoration. Restoration, that essential element that salves and strengthens us upon a return from wandering, can be easily underestimated. Yet restoration is the most critical component for wanderers. Returning from wandering in a desert, whether actual, relational or emotional, demands commemoration. Restoration after wandering through an illness, from captivity, and return from grieving, all deserve uncommon celebration, the sort held for soldiers returning from war.

And for those friends who have helped us both to wander and to return from wandering, we also owe uncommon celebration.

Like the utility line, they help to guide us onward toward wandering, and afterward, homeward, toward restoration.

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