Amongst my current batch of reading is a book entitled Women in the Wild. I’ve been eying it for a few seasons now, but I’ve never picked it up – mostly because I don’t really read non-fiction. But it came through the book drop a few days ago and practically landed in my lap – I’ve learned to listen when that happens.
It’s not much of a book, no more than an inch thick perhaps. Essentially it’s a travelogue, written by various female travelers who have been places most of us (even me) would never get to go.
But these aren’t women who travel in the slick comfort of a cruise ship, who earn their way around the world sitting behind a desk , no, this is something quite different. This is the kind of travelling I wish I could lay claim to (which is, I suspect, why the book is successful in the first place) – these are people who randomly decide to set up camp for a month on the fringes of the desert on the edge of Jerusalem, so far away from civilization that they lose track of everything except the near imperceptible rhythm of the sand dunes. Who decide to defy their cynical nature and plunge into the dark, endless waters of underwater rivers. Who look into a horse’s eyes and see human understanding instead of merely the image of a bucolic countryside.
Sitting at a desk, bound for –yes incredible places and incredible things – but still, sitting at a desk, listening to people complain at me all day that they can’t access the stock market or the housing rates or whatever else they may need that day – I wish I could be one of those people who says to hell with everything, with all of it, and just…disappears to backpack across Europe, bar-tending her way from city to city and town to town until she’s finished.
Sometimes, I just want to be delayed by the world…and tell everyone else to expect me when they see me…
Sometimes…