This weekend I drove to another town so I could wander around an antique store. I was reading The Wander Society by Keri Smith when I decided that morning to not just read about wandering but actually wander.
Where did I end up?
In someone's pasture reading the very book that had sent me wandering in the first place. Nothing happened as I planned. Which, I suppose, was the point. Granted, my adventure was mostly by car and the book focuses a lot on walking, but I know that wandering is a state of mind that requires little. We need a willingness to go out the door and have the next direction be the one that simply looks the most interesting. Or to pause when something catches your eye. Or to sit for a while without needing to accomplish anything.
On the way, feeling spontaneous, I stopped to see where the buffalo roam. But those buffalo ghosted me. And that was perfectly fine.
I got out of my car and walked, listening to the crunch of little pebbles beneath my sneakers. I wandered beneath a small group of oak trees gathered in a loose circle, like friends around a campfire, and listened to the wind moving through the branches with that deep, rustling sound that seems to belong entirely to autumn. I decided, right there, that the sound of wind through oak trees is currently my favorite tree sound.
As I continued walking, I lightly touched the hip-high prairie grass, with its soft, fluffy heads perched on long, slender stems. Their colors shifted as I moved from the pale tan of a manila folder to a deep, dusky burgundy. I don't know exactly what kind these were, and somehow, I liked not knowing. Simply noticing was enough.
After walking a bit, I turned back around to see the scene from a different angle. Love that! Then I found a perfectly flat rock and sat down.
And listened. And pondered.
Birds. Wind. The country breathing around me. Every now and then, a car passed by and briefly interrupted the quiet before disappearing down the road.
Nothing remarkable happened.
Which was, perhaps, the remarkable part. The part that really calmed my nervous system.
Eventually, I got back in the car and continued toward my original destination. The Antique Store's door sign said, "Closed for Good." Hmmm. I opened the map and looked for somewhere else to wander.
That is when I found a little coffee shop close to a lake.
The coffee shop was NOT roadside. I drove down a gravel road, unsure, as I continued onto someone's private property, past a barndominium to the lower part of the land where another small barn rested under the trees. There were tables outside, but no flags announcing OPEN. I called and they welcomed me in, so I walked down their gravel path, again noticing the sound crunching under my sneakers. I ordered a sweet coffee, and settled down at their outside seating with my copy of The Wander Society. I read a few pages, doodled in the margins, watched low clouds roll southward across the sky above me, and ate my honey badger panini with apple chips.
And somewhere between these gentle activities and some soft hellos to others walking by, I realized I enjoy wandering. Maybe that's what it gives us: a chance to be available to the things we are usually too busy to notice.
The Wander Society's patron saint, Walt Whitman, once wrote:
Yes, uncle Walt, yes.
The open road makes no promises, but to the curious, it gives treasures. And I like that.
