American Bus Ride, Part 1: A Horse With No Name
On trail crew, we began every morning with a stretch circle and a question of the day. One July morning, someone posed the question to the group: “What are three things that are on your bucket list?” This required some thought for me. I didn’t have a bucket list in any formal sense, and I seemed to rarely think about long-term aspirations. Making a bucket list always seemed like the first item on a bucket list I hadn’t yet gotten to. I remembered the idea I had had on a recent bus ride from Boston to Springfield. Something about the thought that seemed to pop up when getting close to your stop— what if I just stayed on and kept going? —or at big stations with screens with far-off names— what if I just got on any one of these buses or trains? Like jumping into an unknown river and seeing where the tide would take you, like closing your eyes for a while to discover later where you will have floated. I had been struck by Wanderlust at the ripe age of twenty-one, before that, having ...