The Way of the Wanderer -

I think I travel because I'm alive. And I don't mean that to sound glib. I mean that I really should be dead. A part of me still thinks that maybe I did die years ago when I was an ambitious urban planner working in Iran on the future master plan for the city of Tehran, and that someone else, another me, in fact, quite a generous array of me's - took over my body and mind and have been living here happily ever since.

It's a short story, but still a disconcerting one. Even as I write it now I feel an odd tremor through my fingers.

My wife Anne and I were high up in the Elburz Mountains of Iran. This dramatic range acts as a 14,000-foot wall separating Tehran and the desert from the lush jungled hills bordering the Caspian Sea. We'd had a few lazy days of meandering, trying to learn a little more about this anomalous country and its long history. We were returning back over the mountains on the "old road," a narrow unpaved trail that promised more adventure than the carefully graded curves and tunnels of the new road a couple of hundred miles to the west. Everything was going fine. There was no traffic and we felt very much at peace among the peaks and high valleys.

We were descending a steep pass, the road curling and twisting through a broken stretch of country. Around a sharp bend we approached a one-lane bridge with no retaining wall on either side - just a vertical drop of 300 feet or so into a shadowy ravine. A dramatic place. Then suddenly, with no warning, an enormous Mack truck came barreling across the bridge spewing rocks and dust. He, like us, assumed he had the road to himself and was trying to gain acceleration for the long climb up the pass. By this time we were actually on the bridge, which seemed hardly wide enough for one car, let alone two vehicles heading straight for each other. We realized he couldn't possibly brake without careening off the bridge. We also knew the same applied to us, and there wasn't time to stop anyway. But I did brake. I didn't know what else to do. And-like watching a slow-motion film - we could see our car skidding sideways right toward the wall-less edge of the bridge, and the ravine. We both closed our eyes and I remember two silly things quite distinctly: a beautiful color of bright purple inside my closed eyelids, and feeling a strip of torn leather on the steering wheel and wondering why I'd never repaired it. We were still skidding; I could hear the gravel hissing under the sliding tires. We waited, eyes still closed, for the collision with the truck or for the fall into the ravine - or both. We were absolutely calm. No screams. Just acceptance.

What seemed like minutes later, but can only have been a second or two, we opened our eyes to find ourselves moving very slowly forward, down the center of the bridge. The car seemed to be driving itself. We pulled to a stop and looked behind us. There was no truck. No dust. We got out of the car and listened. There was no sound - no indication that the truck had ever been there at all. We were absolutely calm; no fear, no shaking, no aftereffects of shock. We just kept looking around and then looked at each other. We even looked over the bridge to see if the truck had tumbled into the ravine. Nothing.

We got back into the car and drove on. We didn't speak for a long time. Then Anne said: "That did happen, didn't it?"

"It happened" was all I could think to say. Though what had actually happened we couldn't understand. All we knew was that something very strange had taken place, and we were still alive. And then we were weeping. Great big sobs. And then laughing, and then very quiet for most of the journey back to Tehran.

Many people experience some climactic event that makes a radical change in their lives. Well, this was ours. We still don't know what happened; we don't know if we "lost" our old selves and somehow emerged unscathed and "new"; and we don't know how we survived when it was obvious even now, having written it all down, I'm none the wiser. Wiser, that is, about the event itself. But we both became far wiser in other ways that completely transformed our lives.

We began to understand with greater clarity the fragility and wonder of life itself; we knew from that moment on we would try to live our lives to the full, doing what we felt, deep down, we should be doing, no longer putting things off until we had accumulated enough cash or confidence, or security, or whatever it takes, to feel "free." We found our freedom on that bridge. And we needed for nothing after that. Even though there were difficult years in material and other ways, we never had any doubts about what we were doing with our lives. It didn't always make sense, particularly to others. But somehow that singular experience bored a hole into our souls and certainty flowed out and has just kept on flowing.

And it is that sense of certainty that has acted as a catalyst for all our ongoing adventures and explorations around the globe which, over the years (a lot of years!) has revealed so much to us of the magic and mystery of our earth and the peoples who inhabit it.

And, as we explored outwards so we inevitably explored inwardly-deeper and deeper, revealing hosts of newly-discovered selves we have been getting to know ever since.

If you haven't experienced that "climactic event," look for small signs and listen to your inner voice. That "certainty" about your true path is there, like the oak tree in the acorn.

Reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1996 by Travelers' Tales, Inc.

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