wan•der•lust (wŏn'dər-lŭst')
n.
A very strong or irresistible impulse to travel.

[German : wandern, to wander (from Middle High German) + Lust, desire (from Middle High German, from Old High German).] from Answers.com

1973: wanderlust Everything begins with a dream, so it seems. In the summer of 1973, my father packed up the family for a short trip that ended up lasting more than a month. I was only three, so I don't remember a lot, but I remember living with dreams about walking in clouds. I had these reoccurring dreams when I was younger where I was in a foreign land, high in the mountains, and lost in the clouds; it was Colorado.

1973: wanderlust I lived with those dreams for years without knowing where they came from, because the dreams were vivid and real, but growing up there was never much said about this road trip and so what were real memories faded into dreams. We camped, stayed in motels, ate out, and saw something new every day--or so there are photos that prove we did, but I don't really remember. I know that, or believe that, the wandering we did planted a seed. It's like prying teeth to get much about it said between my mother and father, she swears she didn't enjoy it, that we weren't prepared for it, and she felt trapped since it so happened that her driver's license expired while they were away and so the driving was left to him. I am told the trip was supposed to have taken us to the Smokey Mountains and then back home, but after the Smokies it went south, then it went west, then it went north, before heading east and home. We never took another trip like it-or if we did, I have no memory and no photos to create ones with, but we did camp a lot when I was growing up in Southern Illinois. And like all kids, I loved to play outside. I remember never wanting summer days to end, never wanting it to get dark, and never wanting to end the adventure of being outside.

1973: wanderlust My mother later told me that when we finally returned home, the power company had arrived to turn the power off. That sounded cool to me, taking off and forgetting the power bill. She didn't think so. I suppose if there were more preperations for the road trip she would have enjoyed it more? Like I said, I really don't remember the trip. I know from the photos that my hair was long, the car was cramped, and my oldest brother rarely wore shoes. The unplanned extended vacation has stayed with me throughout my life as a feeling and as seeding a desire to wander, it festers perhaps whenever I get idle, or so that's what I like to think when I feel those dreams calling me back to wander, back to a life on the road where the days are longer and the possibilities are many. So much happens when traveling that days become weeks and weeks become months.

So my first trek, although not a self-powered one, was the most important one of them all... it allowed me to dream of the rest that have come, and those that will come. I do wish I could actually remember it, but there are these photos with the family posed in corners of the frames in locations such as the Alabama Space and Rocket Center to Carlsbad Caverns, there are these rocks lining my mother's flower gardens that she pulled from a river someplace in Colorado-I think, and there are those dreams of walking in clouds that now are realities.