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Mar. 20th, 2002 12:42 amLarry Niven, the science fiction author, created a character named Louis Wu. Louis was a 200 year old man, young through regeneration drugs, who would occasionally hop in his personal spaceship to search for archaeologic relics from a dead alien civilization. The search was a ruse -- the real goal was to get away from people, from the intricate dance of society. Introspection and long stretches of solitude; travel itself was the goal, the destination was equally interesting in that it wasn't the primary purpose. Australian natives called this "walkabout", Louis called this a sabbatical.
I loved this character in college. Lacking a spaceship, I would hop in my beat-up Volkswagen Beetle, and head out all over New England, usually at night under the stars. My trips would be as short as a 30 minute jaunt into Vermont, and as long as a spur-of-the-moment journey ending in Quebec. Travel, introspection, the hum of the road and the exodus from city streets.
Once, a buddy was bored and I suggested we drive to Massachusetts. He thought I was nuts. We hopped in the bug, drove to the state line, turned around and came back. To paraphrase the immortal words of Suicidal Tendencies, we were thinking about everything, but then again we were thinking about nothing. And talking, and doing. He was hooked.
It soon grew, as these things do. I remember five of us piling into some gas-guzzling hand-me-down tank of a car and driving into the Catskills. That was the second time, and the last time, I have ever seen the Milky Way stand out sharply against the night sky. I remember another trip stopped at the edge of the New York plains, sitting boy-girl-boy-girl on the hood and trunk of the car in a bubble of deadened sound caused by falling nighttime snow.
I wouldn't trade those memories for anything, and I knew it then, as they happened. But. It wasn't exactly a sabbatical, shoulder to shoulder with laughing friends, the tape deck blasting Cure and Indigo Girls tunes.
I started my solo trips again, from time to time. I didn't advertise them.
Today, now and then, I still do them, though not as often as perhaps my soul might demand. I drove two hours into the desert once on a Phoenix business trip. Recently, on a Boston trip, I drove through Maine on the way to the airport (Maine is nowhere near the airport.)
The destination isn't important, and can be 180 degrees from the "purpose" of a drive to nowhere in particular. I can be quite social at my stopovers and even seek it out; I am drawn to paradox as always.
I loved this character in college. Lacking a spaceship, I would hop in my beat-up Volkswagen Beetle, and head out all over New England, usually at night under the stars. My trips would be as short as a 30 minute jaunt into Vermont, and as long as a spur-of-the-moment journey ending in Quebec. Travel, introspection, the hum of the road and the exodus from city streets.
Once, a buddy was bored and I suggested we drive to Massachusetts. He thought I was nuts. We hopped in the bug, drove to the state line, turned around and came back. To paraphrase the immortal words of Suicidal Tendencies, we were thinking about everything, but then again we were thinking about nothing. And talking, and doing. He was hooked.
It soon grew, as these things do. I remember five of us piling into some gas-guzzling hand-me-down tank of a car and driving into the Catskills. That was the second time, and the last time, I have ever seen the Milky Way stand out sharply against the night sky. I remember another trip stopped at the edge of the New York plains, sitting boy-girl-boy-girl on the hood and trunk of the car in a bubble of deadened sound caused by falling nighttime snow.
I wouldn't trade those memories for anything, and I knew it then, as they happened. But. It wasn't exactly a sabbatical, shoulder to shoulder with laughing friends, the tape deck blasting Cure and Indigo Girls tunes.
I started my solo trips again, from time to time. I didn't advertise them.
Today, now and then, I still do them, though not as often as perhaps my soul might demand. I drove two hours into the desert once on a Phoenix business trip. Recently, on a Boston trip, I drove through Maine on the way to the airport (Maine is nowhere near the airport.)
The destination isn't important, and can be 180 degrees from the "purpose" of a drive to nowhere in particular. I can be quite social at my stopovers and even seek it out; I am drawn to paradox as always.
