I’m longing to ride on a freight trail, and be a good old American guest. – from Good Old American Guest by Merle Haggard
On a late afternoon in mid-September, I sat at the timber’s edge, watching our two highly active honey bee hives: so many bees every few seconds flying out of the hives, out over the prairie and beyond; and just as many returning. Except for gusty winds blowing through the tree canopy, all was quiet, with not much else going on. I was well within the comfort zone, and there was no reason to upset the apple cart, as the old saying goes. And yet, something gently pulled at me, a vague notion that I was missing an opportunity; the pull was not strong like it was when I was young, but it was definitely there.
Despite occasionally feeling that I should be doing something else, I remained sitting for a long while. And with my wife running errands, I then spent the rest of the afternoon reading, playing the guitar, and walking the home trails. I was at peace, enjoying my surroundings, feeling calm and secure. In the outside world, there were many potentially harmful unknowns; but not here. So at sixty-one and retired, I may have finally understood some of what my seventy-six-year-old grandmother may have felt so many decades ago: Frustrated with a mere week’s worth of vacation from work each year, I once approached her and asked, “Since you’ve got the time, why don’t you travel?” “Not for me,” she answered. For her, whose first language was still Czech after being a U.S. citizen for over half a century, the increasingly complex environment beyond her small brick bungalow must have seemed overwhelmingly daunting, full of dangerous risks. The outside world may have been pulling at her, but she was strong willed and quite firmly rooted.
Throughout life, the comfort zone develops for a reason; of course, there is a fear of the unknown involved, but I think the boundaries develop more as a result of experience, finding out what works and what doesn’t as a reflection of one’s unique personality, abilities, desires, and knowledge. At some point, what is “not for me” becomes clear. At the same time, it is important to test or redefine the boundaries, gently pushing the envelope with an open heart and mind. If I had not done so, I may never have taken that first trip to Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, ridden a motorcycle across the northern Great Plains, taken a solo canoe-camping trip on Missouri’s Current River, sung and played my guitar before a large gathering, left a good job to pursue a degree, given a lecture on ecology to a room full of college students, or felt comfortable with a smartphone. While safe at home, the outside world pulling at me is a prompt to ask, What else am I capable of?
Whenever I’m at our Quiver Lake cabin, I’ll always take at least a few minutes to simply sit and look out across the 3.5-mile-wide Illinois River valley to the distant bluffs of Fulton County. It’s a beautiful view of forests, bluffs, wetlands, and open water that I can never have enough of. But it also makes me want to grab my canoe, cross the lake, and head to the Illinois River beyond, just to see what is there that is different from the last trip. Most of the time, just thinking about it is enough, and I’ll go back to reading my book. But then there is the rare occasion when a seed has been planted, and I may begin thinking of longer trips. Most of them never happen, but for those that do, the actual planning, especially with my wife, can be like a shot of adrenalin and my enthusiasm soars. A few weeks later, after going over numerous maps and reading a stack of background materials, I sometimes feel as if I’ve experienced a journey weeks before even leaving the driveway.
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For most of her life, my grandmother was never really much of a traveler, although she did sail across the Atlantic Ocean in rough seas and pass through New York’s Ellis Island at age 22 to begin her new life in the United States at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. And she did return twice, as I recall, to her native Czechoslovakia with my grandfather, where he, in fact, died on their last trip in 1973. Upon returning to Chicago alone in a 747 jet, with her cremated husband in an urn, she never traveled again. (I now realize that I was insensitive when asking her about why she no longer traveled, by not taking that experience into account.)
But I suppose a shrinking comfort zone is a natural tendency with advanced age, even without any great tragedies (for example, these days I would never consider traveling cross country on a motorcycle). It may not be possible to stop this gradual process, especially if health issues become a complication. But I am convinced that it can and must be resisted, lest one becomes too constrained and maybe even immobilized in an inescapable and perhaps uncomfortable safely net.
Grandmother with Miska, 1980s