So my mom knows about the blog...

Apart from campus security, there wasn’t anyone I wanted to hide this blog from more than my mother.

I had a creeping suspicion that she knew about the blog a few weeks ago when she asked me—over the phone—if I had any insects in the van.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” I told her. “I have ants.”

Not only did she ask me this right after I posted my entry, “ANTS!,” but she responded with uncharacteristic nonchalance.

“Oh, you have insects!” she exclaimed, unconvincingly.

This was not my mother talking. If I had told my real mother that I had ants, she would have reacted as if I had told her that I was letting a family of pet tarantulas run free in the van. Then I’d hear the seven words that seem to—with unwavering ubiquity—make it into every conversation: “Oh my god! What’s wrong with you?!”

Yet, I didn’t get those seven words. I knew something was up. So I called her out on it.

“You’re reading my blog, aren’t you?”

After enduring several minutes of strained denials and overacting that would have won her a Golden Razzie, she finally fessed up. Not only does she know about the blog, but she’s been reading it since last March, ever since she found it posted on someone’s facebook profile.

She told me her favorite entry was “Berries and black bears,” which I thought was average at best. (On a side note, most of my friends mention “Throwing up in the van” as their favorite. And who can blame them? It’s my favorite entry, too. And it probably won’t be eclipsed until the inevitable sequel, “Shitting in the van,” gets posted after another round of food poisoning.)

After our conversation, it hit me. She’s known all along about bear encounters, drinking shots with severed toes, pimp-buttons and almost-orgies: shit that I don’t want my mom knowing about.

But really, I could care less about my mom knowing. What I’m afraid of is self-censorship. That’s because the best, most interesting, and most valuable writing is honest writing. Without honesty, the relationship between writer and reader is a flimsy one. The best writers, I feel, are those who aren’t afraid of revealing the darkest and most intimate details of their lives. When I read I want to learn something about humanity; I want to see a reflection of myself in someone else’s writing.

Alas, I find myself censoring all the time. I’ve probably wanted to post an entry about half the people who read this blog but won’t in consideration of their feelings. Half the names I use are made-up. I still refuse to reveal my college’s name. Why can’t I just tell it how it is?

I’ve determined that I’m not going to let anyone in my humble readership—mom included—deter me from writing honestly, however upsetting it may be to them. To quote Thoreau, who I, as you can tell by now, have a nasty man-crush on: “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” I promise, I will.

Travels to on-campus almost-orgies

I go to one of the wealthiest colleges in the country. Each year, legions of degree-toting graduates obliviously sign away the next forty years of their lives to sell their souls to companies like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America to both pay off their gargantuan student loans and to fulfill shallow dreams of yachts, trophy wives and spending their mere two weeks of yearly vacation on lavish cruise lines so they can be pampered to death and have their asses competently wiped by golden-tanned cabana boys.

When people ask what I'm going to school for—"Liberal Studies"—and why—"for the love of learning"—they are visibly suspicious. Must there be an ulterior motive behind wanting to learn? Is not the thirst for knowledge as old as mankind?

I don’t blame my fellow students for thinking me crazy. I feel bad for them. They’ve been taught all their lives to work hard in school so they could get paid the big bucks (as if making the big bucks was the end-all-be-all purpose of existence). Few have ever opened Walden, lived out of a van, or experienced (let alone seen) the poverty that one-fifth of the world lives in.

This is my second semester here and I’ve told less than ten people on campus about the van. I’ve decided that while I will still be discreet about my lodgings, I ought to begin sharing tales of my van more.

I bumped into Bill at the library. He’s an undergraduate senior in my travel writing class. We got to talking and I couldn’t help myself any longer. I gave him a virtual tour of the van with pictures on my computer. We laughed as I pointed out the coat hook, the laundry area, and even the fabled waste basket that I hurled in last April.

He invited me to go out to have drinks with a couple of his female friends that evening. Delighted to have the chance to spend the evening with someone other than the van (who I’m beginning to personify too much for my own good), I gleefully accepted.

Bill was trying to get with Alley—a cute blond who has a boyfriend on a different campus. Her friend Lydia came too, who also has a boyfriend.

Before we hit the bars, we went to my van so I could drop off some books and give him a tour. Not expecting company, I left the van in disarray with dirty gym clothes and cereal boxes scattered on the floor. Upon opening the side doors, a covey of smells escaped like spirits unleashed from a cursed ark.

“It doesn’t smell as bad as you’d think it would,” Bill observed.

We got kicked out of the first two bars because Lydia didn’t have her ID. We wound up in a classy-looking bar that played piano music while suit-and-tied couples ate fancy meals.

I was in my ratty Coldfoot, Alaska tee shirt and a pair of jeans whose origin is unbeknownst to me. Bill—also in disheveled attire—complained that the bar reminded him of the one in The Shining. It was true. Even the bartender was creepily amiable, politely responding to Bill’s insolent request for more “uppity music” and to lift the ban on smoking.

I didn’t care, though. Like a true traveler I took everything—the sights, smells, sounds and idiosyncrasies of my compatriots—in with a hearty gusto.

In our travel writing class we just read an essay by Tobias Smollett who traveled across Europe in the 1800's. Just imagine going on a trip with a curmudgeonly Grandpa Simpson and you’ll understand the kind of traveler Smollett was.

Upon traveling through France, Smollett notes:

“If there is no cleanliness among these people, much less shall we find decency… There are certain mortifying views of human natures, which undoubtedly ought to be concealed as much as possible, in order to prevent giving offence: and nothing can be more absurd than to plead the difference of custom in different countries, in defence of those usages which cannot fail giving disgust to the organs and senses of mankind.”

Yikes. He goes on to ridicule the French for things as trifling as hinges and locks.

I’ve determined to never become a Smollett. I wish to look upon the foreign—never with condescension—but with wide-eyed wonder. Each adversity ought to be treated as a noble challenge. New viewpoints and experiences will help me break apart the hardening clay that encrusts the idle of mind into their own little curmudgeonly worlds.

When we got to Bill’s apartment our class differences were evident. The apartment, with its 30-ft high ceilings, is located in a refurbished tobacco factory, which must cost at least $2,000 a month. Complete with a plasma screen TV, a PS3, and trendy decor, I realized I was in a home far different than the one I had to crouch into each evening.

Bill busted out some fancy wines. When I got out of his bathroom, I quickly noted how the party’s atmosphere had changed.

Bill stood in his boxers by the TV posing—like Costanza in front of a camera—while Lydia ineptly sketched his figure on a giant white sheet of canvas. Bill had his arms folded around the back of his head, and had his back arched as if he was stretching for a limbo. I was all giggles at this point but everyone else was deathly serious. Soon after, Bill got behind the canvas and with a charcoal pencil he feverishly drew Lydia who had stripped down to her bra and panties in a series of dark charcoal lines.

Lydia sprawled out on the floor and flipped off her bra unleashing a pair of jello-y, milky white breasts. Alley began stripping down and laid affectionately with her. I participated in this art scene by busting out my notebook and writing down everything I saw: empty wine bottles, ashtrays with cigarette stubs, two coeds writhing together on the floor with Tarkovsky's Solaris on in the background, a spartan student in the midst of wealth, and a celibate in the midst of what could soon be an all-out orgy.

Lydia delivered wet, (though tongue-less) kisses to Alley and I think if a few more glasses of wine were imbibed I could have watched a freak-fest unravel. Alas, things ended harmlessly with a game of Apples to Apples and me smilingly teetering back to the van, relishing in the afterglow of my open-minded travels.

Liddy Library

Oh Liddy. My lonesome library. I spend more time with Liddy than I do with all the people I know. That’s because I know almost nobody here. I do know Liddy, though.

I cloister myself in the back corner next to a reading lamp and an air vent. From my corner, I can see everyone in the room while not having to worry about someone peering at my computer screen from behind.

If a team of Hollywood set designers wished it so, they could transform Liddy into a medieval mead hall just by replacing the shelves of magazines and encyclopedias with the trophy heads of beasts and sword racks.

The windows are as big as ocean skiffs. Rows of large oaken tables function as reading troughs and a trio of brass chandeliers descend from the 40-foot high ceiling like spiders sprawled upside-down from chain-link threads. The room has an air of classic grandeur, which seems to magnify my loneliness.

Here—when I’m not doing schoolwork—I consort with some of my closest friends: Thoreau, Abbey, Bryson, Troost. Yet I secretly wish—despite all of my agoraphobic disinclinations and solitary penchants—to comingle with the many silent, studious denizens who I see every day, but never talk to.

I wonder who all these people are. The girls, especially. What are their names? Their interests? Their passions?

But the library is no place to socialize. You may be able to bump, serendipitously, into your next lover at a church, a bar, or a barn-raising, but you’re sure as hell not going to meet anyone at a library. There’s too much silence, too much concentration. We go to the library knowing what we want to do and what will happen. No one expects chance. No one even wants it. Except me, maybe. Besides, the unspoken (and rigorously-obeyed) rules of decorum leave little possibility for such a chance encounter.

Though, sometimes I’ll catch one of them glancing at me. Maybe even smiling coquettishly.

I’m usually terrified when this happens. I respond, typically, by pretending to focus on the screen of my laptop while reminding myself about the horrors of human contact.

Once, though, a freshman placed her hand on my shoulder and asked me to watch her laptop for a minute. Rather, she grinded her palm into my deltoid as if she was feeling for the ripeness of a cantaloupe. Later, she sat down next to me, pulled my book from my hands, and proceeded to tell me about her life, her interests, her passions, seemingly oblivious (or deliberately neglectful) of library convention and etiquette. It was my fantasy fulfilled. Her name was Andrea, she was beautiful, and—despite the air of indomitable confidence she carried—her hand trembled when she wrote her phone number in my notebook.

When she left, I closed the notebook with the number and never looked at it again. I opened my novel, leaned back in my chair and kept on reading, contentedly.

Rule of Thumb #6: Shatter your fears. Know the unknown.

Day 6: May 20, 2007. Northern British Columbia to Prince George, BC (776 miles)


Four summers ago, I drove up to Alaska with my friend Paul in my dad’s Saturn SUV.

I remember how nervous we were when we slept behind an abandoned motel in Great Falls, Montana and how frightened we were of bears on our hike up a mountain-trail in Yellowstone. The drive was, for me, The Journey of all Journeys. It was an adventure. I still think back on the trip nostalgically, but I deem it about as “adventurous” as my weekly walk to the laundromat.

Adventure evolves. What was once adventurous may—with repetition—become mundane. The professional skydiver who daily tumbles into the air is as much an adventurer as the secretary who daily reorders her filing cabinet. Inversely, the agoraphobe’s walk across the street could be just as intrepid as an astronaut’s first leap across a lonely planet.

Adventure is the exploration of the unknown. The experienced hiker/climber/traveler, what have you, may very well experience adventurous moments, but he is no adventurer. The naïf, rather, must relentlessly conjure courage and conquer fears. The climbing guide or common seafarer function as machines, reading the manual of routine that repetition has imprinted in their heads. The naïf explores his self as much as he does the land around him. It is he who in bounding over unexplored terrain, reshapes the contours of his mind.

I had come up to Coldfoot in the summer of 2005 to immerse myself—a lifelong suburbanite—in the unknown: a landscape of barren tundra valleys, irascible black bears, and raging rivers. And I got just that.

I came back the next year because I craved Alaska once again. I wanted to experience all those same sensations anew. But it wasn’t the same. Nor was it the following year. Or the year after that. It couldn’t have been. What was once unknown was known.

The hitchhike was my excursion beyond the borders of my little kingdom into the unknown. And across North America I hoped to stretch the boundaries of my fears and inhibitions with me as I traveled further and further away from the person I left behind in Alaska.

But I wasn’t thinking about any of these things at the time. I didn’t understand why I wanted to go. I just wanted to travel and to do so in a way that would do justice to the idea of “travel.”

Why was I cursed with this burning restlessness? Part of me wondered why I didn’t desire a home, wife, and children. Was I merely suffering from first-world desuetude? Or was I simply trying to jar some much-needed drama into my life? Or had I simply been reading too many Jack London novels? Or was there something more?

We are a mobile people. Even the most stationary in body daily embark on voyages of the mind. Might this itch, this burning restlessness, be the cause of the great human migration? Perhaps we move not to sate hungers and claim territories, but to quench curiosities.

Is it not this curiosity—so uniquely human—that drives men to climb the highest peaks, to survey the wide expanse of lonely oceans, and to someday step foot on distant planets? Oh, how grand it was to live according to these ancient rhythms; to finally heed to a call that I had muffled for far too long.

I was a traveler. But I was no adventurer. At least in comparison to some of my adventuring forebears, I was no adventurer. The adventurer has his mind so fixed on his prize that he is willing to forfeit his life to attain it. That’s because his dream is more precious than his life. Could it be that it is this hellbent resolve that has populated the distant islands of the Pacific, put men atop prodigious, cloud-covered peaks, and sent the European explorer sailing along an arc of endless ocean?

This wasn’t me. I had parents and friends that I could rely on. I even brought my credit card just in case I had to fly home. Yet, I secretly wished to have my name mentioned amongst adventurers like Shakleton and Cook, Hilary and Heyerdahl. I wished to cease my muddling around in this world and dedicate my life to some high purpose or goal that would give it clear meaning.

But I couldn’t. My ties to family also functioned as chains. Not willing to sever these ties and crush the hearts of those who raised and love me, I will forever remain bound by my social obligations.

The true adventurer is a paradox. He is self-centered, yet sacrificial. Living for others is eclipsed by his need to live for himself, yet his very life comes secondary to the fulfillment of his dream.

Sometimes when I’m in one of my more solemn tempers—when I dream of grandeur—I still fantasize about cutting myself off from everything and everyone, making one final and grand gesture to assert my absolute independence from the ties that bind.

But alas, I never do.

Riding with Dennis—a trucker—was no adventure. It was a calm two-day drive through some evermore glorious Canadian scenery. On the Cassiar Highway I glazed over grey peaks and spotted nearly 20 black bears.

Dennis was a big, lumbering, plain-faced man who you might find at the local Tim Hortons with a donut and coffee in hand at a table reading the paper. Most of the ride was spent in silence, listening to NPR on the radio, and occasionally talking about family. We stopped for coffee and soup.

On the Yellowhead Highway heading to Prince George, also nicknamed the “Highway of Tears,” a number of female hitchhikers have been abducted, raped, and killed. At coffee shops along the way, stickers on registers warned girls about the risks of hitchhiking. This was the dark side of hitchhiking and, unfortunately, stories like these attach a stigma to what should be a more practiced art of travel.

Dennis had a simple, fatherly demeanor. He wouldn’t reveal intimate details about his wife or her pubic hair and I didn’t think to ask or wish to know. He was quiet and reserved, and that was fine by me.

Dennis got drowsy an hour from his home in Prince George, so he pulled over and I set up camp next to his truck for the night. In the morning, I’d buy him breakfast, and we’d part ways.

While my day with Dennis doesn’t merit so much discussion on adventure, I was still undoubtedly on one. Ahead of me was the border of two great nations, my worrisome girlfriend in Oregon, and rides with people I wouldn’t dare associate with in ordinary life.

ANTS!

I have ants in my van.

Of all the potential disasters that could have befallen me vandwelling, having ants was one thing I never considered.

I woke up the other day to see them crawling in my food storage drawers. At first I saw just a couple. But then, on closer inspection, I could see hundreds of them scrounging in my trail mix bag and in other drawers too.

How did they even get in here? Hell, the van is a foot and a half off the ground.

They weren’t those big shiny-shelled carpenter ants. No, these ones were tiny and easily squishable. I probably thumbed 100 of them to death before fleeing the van with all infected food in hand. I carried my five-pounds of trail mix by the very corner of the ziplock bag, held as far away from my body as I could, as if it was a rag that someone with polio just wiped themselves with.

I’m usually not too squeamish with bugs. In Alaska, I didn’t bother removing the many mosquitoes that would often kamikaze into my oatmeal. And on other occasions in the outdoors I’ve had little issue eating food that had been infiltrated by retinues of ants.

But sleeping with them was another matter entirely. I imagined them spelunking into my orifices at night like cave-divers or that legions of them would haul my beloved cereal boxes away while I was at class.

To remedy the situation, I moved my parking spot two spots down (so their scent trail would be disrupted), and started hanging bags of food from my ceiling to make it really hard on them.