Someplace I’ll never be

I finally got cable TV. First thing I noticed is legitimately thinking we have way too many channels. Granted a lot of them are PPV channels or Spanish language channels, but it still takes a good five or ten mins to flip through the guide to see what’s on. My favorite channels are still Discovery, History, Natl. Geographic, etc.. So I was watching them and seeing all these marvelous places in the world that I wish I could go to but I know I never will.

To add to that I had a fit of depression and thought I’d look up a few people online and look at their MySpace pictures. Of course I see them having fun, in wonderful places about the U.S. and around the world, again places I’ll most likely never be.

I’m a nomad by nature, I like to go places. I like travel, especially to new places. Double that for wilderness places that I can explore on my own at my own pace. I have been fortunate enough to visit some of the places I’ve always wanted to go. I’ve been hiking through Mt. Ranier, Lake Itasca, and places all over Iowa. I’ve spent the night on a beach in Florida. All were great adventures I suppose, but I don’t know I still feel like I’m trapped sometimes. Everywhere is so far away from here it seems, so expensive to travel. I know some of the places I would ideally like to go would be places those who are likely to travel with me might not enjoy, or the fact that I am American might even make those places dangerous.

I want to see what its like in the rain forests of south America. I want to visit ruins of ancient cultures in central America. I want to scuba dive through a shipwreck, heck I just want to scuba dive anywhere. I want to fly a plane, I want to fly an ultralight and hang glide. I want to climb a mountain, then base jump off of it. I want to explore huge caverns and caves, deep into the earth. I want to sail a boat. I want to see Alaska. I want to travel through Europe, touring old castles and finding little towns and sampling their food/beverages. I want to stand on the beaches of Normandy, stand in the field at Thermopylae, touch the stones at Stonehenge. Have a cup of coffee in Columbia and watch a game show in Japan. All of these things, I’ll never do. Some of them perhaps, but not all and that makes me sad still.

Maybe its just wanderlust, maybe somewhere in my family’s history we were a part of some nomadic tribe of some sort. I love Iowa, but I’ve been here for so long its starting to run out of adventures. I often wonder what it would be like if I just dropped everything and left. Just dropped off the grid so to speak, leave all my stuff behind except for one thing, I’d either spend whatever money I had or sold enough stuff to get a rugged laptop and a few bits of durable travel gear to document my travels. Just go out and walk, hitch or buy crappy cars with cash and drive them till they died (then donate them to the kidney foundation so they don’t just sit where I leave ‘em). I’d take whatever jobs I can get to eat/sleep. I’d join up w/ fishing crews or somesuch near the coasts. When I want to leave the country I’d try to get hired on a merchant vessel of some sort that makes trans-Atlantic trips. I know I’m romanticizing it a lot, but hey its just a thought experiment. I know there are many hardships with that lifestyle, and who knows if I’d be able to overcome them.

It doesn’t matter anyway, I’d never leave like that. I wouldn’t be able to leave Mrs. Kimpak, ever, for any reason. She could of course come along though *wink*. Maybe I just have cabin fever too, I hate winter because I can’t be outside as much. And this time of year is the worst, its when we’re past the middle and getting closer to spring that I start wishing I could go camping. The woods is where I feel the most comfortable, I’m fortunate to be able to live out in the country as I do.