When considering values, adventure is not one I would naturally embrace. What constitutes adventure? Unfamiliarity, transportation, danger all come to mind. A dollop of excitement, a whisper of loneliness, and an urgent sense of “what will happen next?”
I wondered if I would have adventure when just the other day I went to a happy hour with some old school friends, to find out what’s up with wives and children, with jobs and homes. One’s going to Colorado School of Mines, another sold the house in the country and moved back to the city. One’s studying to be an ethnographic archeologist. One tells me that he finally read my sexy story, that I gave him like ten years ago and never said anything about. He looks at me with a gross new leer in his eye, and I still think he’s a bit of an ass. I’m not even sure which story he’s talking about.
My ginger-headed old roommate looks a little tired, talking of how many hours she works, how her kids are both out of college now, set up in jobs in medicine, doctor and a physicians assistant, all within driving distance. Her parents, too. They used to live on the coast in a little town that she thought was shabby, but sounded like heaven to me. They were afraid of the raising water from global warming. They had been National Park Rangers. She wonders what she’ll do after retirement. She has no idea what she’d do without her job.
The most popular one shows up two hours late, claiming he got the time wrong, but nobody cares. We all commit to stay another hour.
Suddenly, one mentions the post-doc who was hit by lightening while jogging on the hike and bike trail a few years ago. She was super smart and organized, had gotten a Fulbright and was set to leave for Ireland in a few weeks. Our merriment vanishes.
My roommate remembered how she went with Michael went to the post-doc’s house when she didn’t show up, but no one was there. We all found out on the evening television news. They hadn’t identified her body, but we all knew that was where and when the post-doc ran.
I remember how the thick clouds that day were black and angry, billowing in over the hill country against the pale blue sky, as if they had a bone to pick with human beings. In some way I wasn’t surprised to hear someone was killed. I was surprised to realize she was someone whom I knew, not well, but well enough to feel that deep pit in your stomach of injustice, of chaos, and loss of meaning. Wow. To die by lightening strike.
That’s how the post-doc will always be remembered.
Thus, I do not think of myself as a lover of adventure, and I would not list this as among my top five values. It’s more something that I slide sideways towards, out of desperation, or boredom, or wicked curiosity. And yet, isn’t it adventure that gives us the spark of feeling suddenly alive, of being fully human?
On my way home, another storm is approaching over the hill country, I aim my Honda Pilot straight through the worst of it towards home.