Stevenson - Grounded: a down to earth journey around the world

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Table of Contents

For Rebecca

Introduction

Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia

WEVE done this once before.

Seven years ago, I was living in lower Manhattan with my girlfriend, Rebecca. She worked at a small start-up company. I was on staff at Newsweek. We both put in long hours, and our days bled one into the next. Week after week, we ordered takeout from the same set of restaurants, went to the same bars, hung out with the same friends. I spent inordinate amounts of timesometimes lying awake, late at nightpondering how to get ahead in my career.

We were comfortable, yet I couldnt shake this nagging sense that we were stagnating. Wed disappeared into our ambitions and our daily routines. As I ate another rushed lunch at the same Midtown deli, I wondered: Could a more transcendent existence be waiting somewhere out there, beyond the everyday grind?

Rebecca had the same thought. She and I started daring each other to make a drastic move. Lets quit our jobs and just drive to Alaska, wed joke.

These jokes became more frequent. Less jokey. And over time, we sort of forgot if we were joking at all.

One spring day, we did it. We quit our jobsto the minor shock (and, I noted in a few cases, the self-loathing envy) of our friends and coworkers. We ditched all our possessions, hopped into a beat-up Honda, and drove.

We pulled off the road in dusty, nowhere towns. We got drunk on Tuesday afternoons in flyblown bars. We smoked a joint on a rickety veranda in Austin, laughing with an old friend. We camped on the Rio Grande, spotted a pod of whales off the California coast, and spent a full week in Salt Lake City for no clear reason. We never knew where wed be sleeping the next night, and we loved it that way. From the concrete rote of Midtown, wed escaped into a life that burst with color and immediacy.

After a few months, we woke up one morning, looked around, and discovered we were in Alaska. Wed taken our own dare, and our souls felt richer for it. We had zero regrets. Sadly, we were also out of money. Abject poverty (and the brutal Alaskan winter) loomed before us. We wistfully acknowledged that the time had arrived to reenter polite society. Time to turn the Honda around, hit the gas pedal, and plunge smack back into the drab bustle of the I-95 corridor.

We packed up the car for the long drive east and, as I slammed the trunk shut on our lovely idyll, I lingered a momentgazing out at the cold gray swells of the Pacific. I could have sworn they were beckoning to me. Wouldnt it be wonderful, I thought, if instead of turning back we could just... keep forging on?

SEVEN years later, now in our thirties, wed settled into a pleasant life in Washington, D.C. I was working from home and writing for various magazines. Rebecca had gone to law school and was now a litigator at a claw-your-eyes-out downtown firm. We ordered takeout from a new set of restaurants, drank in a new set of bars, and hung out with a new set of friends. Career ambitions and lifestyle routines had once again encrusted our lives.

We bought nice furniture and framed prints for our apartment. Ordered cable TV with all the trimmings. Set up wireless Internet and satellite radio in our living room.

By any reasonable measure, life was good. No suffering. No want. No ill health. Whenever the numbing trance of electronic entertainment failed me, various inebriants helped the days flip by. But again, I began to get a nagging feeling that life lacked a certain frisson. Spontaneity. Surprise. Above all: adventure.

The more I dwelt on this, the more restless I became. In the first paragraph of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville writes: Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking peoples hats offthen, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. The hats are undoubtedly different in my day from those in Melvilles, but I could sense myself eyeing them with the same bad intentions. Pushing my shopping cart through a too-crowded Whole Foods, or watching people in suits thumbing their BlackBerrys at a bar, I would feel a sharp, sudden, directionless rage. The itch to escapefrom everything around meflashed hot across my skin.

Meanwhile, Rebecca had hit the wall at work. Shed started at her firm straight out of law school and had toiled there for three years with nutty hours and little vacation. The life of a law firm associate logging seventy-hour weeks will, over time, take its toll on any thoughtful human being. (And yes, there are attorneys who qualify as such.)

Of course, society has a clear prescription for thirtysomething, water-treading couples like Rebecca and me. Were supposed to buy a house and start a family. And indeed, a wave of domesticity had lately crashed over our peer group. Conversations with friends always seemed to gravitate toward real estate and pregnancy. Prenatal vitamins. Good elementary schools.

These struck us as terrific notions to keep in mind for somewhere down the road. But our immediate impulses pushed the other way. We felt no urge to march forward within the socially sanctioned rutits high walls guiding us smoothly toward parenthood, a mortgage, and on and on. We wanted to scramble out the top of the rut, dust ourselves off, look down from above with relieved smiles, and skip merrily away.

Around this time there appeared a familiar spark of mischief in Rebeccas eyes. And the dares began. Lets quit our jobs and just hop on a cargo freighter, wed joke to each other.

These jokes became more frequent. Less jokey. Soon enough, we realized we werent joking at all.

AFTER some discussion, we concluded that it wasnt worth it to rip up our lives just to embark on some aimless, knock-around interludesay, chilling on a beach in Central America until we got bored again. For one thing (while I admit this sort of plan did hold its appeals for mehammock, spliff, sunset, etc.), Rebecca is not cut out for idle relaxation. She has a nonstop, hyperactive personality. Like there are millions of tiny rabbits hopping around in my brain, she describes it.

This seems a decent place to mention that Rebecca is crazy. Only a wee bit crazy, mind you, but its there. She will acknowledge this. Anyone who knows her will acknowledge thisas they close their eyes, nod, and chuckle. I love it about her. Its part of what drew me to her in the first place. But without some structure and a vaguely identified end pointfor instance, Alaskathe blurry whir of possibility causes her brain to eat itself. Youll trust me when I tell you this must be avoided at all costs. Besides, what was missing from our lives was not the repose of a snoozy beach vacation. We had more ease and comfort than we could handle. What we craved was novelty. Challenge. Something to shake us from our trance and pop open our eyes.

I decided that the answer to our problems was to circumnavigate the earth.

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