between

We travel for pleasure, for a door-slamming sense of “I’m outta here,” for a change of air, for edification, for the big vulgar boast of being distant, for the possibility of being transformed, for the voyeuristic romance of gawping at the exotic; and sometimes we travel because we have been banished...

Nothing to me has more excitement in it than the experience of rising early in the morning in my own house and getting into my car and driving away on a long, meandering trip through North America. Not much on earth can beat it in travel for a sense of freedom — no pat-down, no passport, no airport muddle, just revving an engine and then “Eat my dust.” The long, improvisational road trip by car is quintessentially American.

--Paul Theroux

January is difficult.  Not for the reasons you might think.  Several years ago I self-diagnosed and cured my tendencies toward seasonal affective disorder.  I make no claims for those who may suffer similarly but, for me, it was a fairly simple cure.  I sprung for some warm clothes and went outside.  I bought snowshoes even (if only we could get enough snow).  Oh, and I drink some red wine...

I have discovered that winter is not exactly a foreign country but still something new and different and therefore full of potential and new experiences.  Exotic though it is, it does not quite cure me of a certain malaise that comes from being held in place by all of the things that have to be done in between summers.  But.  I don't like to wish for time to go by.  I don't like to miss anything.  So I am suspended -- laid over, at the halfway point between memory and anticipation.

In this meantime there are, of course, other ways to travel.  Currently I'm wandering with Wallace Stegner and Bruce Chatwin.  The west has such a death grip on my soul (or perhaps it is I, with a death grip on the western soul...).  If I never get past it at least I will have read otherwise.  

Paul Theroux's wish list, which prompted a scavenger dig for some of my favorite pictures from our tour of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, is here.