West

West.

A word with legendary connotations, deeply ingrained in the ethos of America since it's conception.  Since Europeans first landed in America, the West has stood for all things wild, all things primal.  With  it's purple mountains and deep river canyons, great plains and wooded forest, the West, pure and simple, has long been associated with wilderness.  And the wilderness has a deep hold in the hearts of Americans.

Where this came from I couldn't say - but the West, and the road that leads there, is a theme found throughout American literature.  From Into the Wild's Chris McCandless to Jack Kerouac in On the Road, the journey West holds almost mystical significance.  It is a journey of danger and difficulty, of discovery, or challenge, a road that will push a person to their limits in order to break through these limits, or else kill them in the process.  It often is an extremely personal thing to set out on the road West, a journey that forces one to take stock of themselves, to face their demons and conquer or be conquered.  It is a journey of spirit in which one hopes to be transformed.

In a few short weeks, I will begin my own journey out West, to the plains if South Dakota, to reside among a people older than this country itself.  To the people of Crazy Horse and Black Elk, of the Battle of Little Big Horn and the massacre at Wounded Knee.  It is no longer the Great Plains of old, but there is still some sort of mystery and wild about it.

I have in my heart longings of adventure, of the road.  To travel and see what there is to see.  To meet who there is to meet.  To experience for myself what is necessary and what is not.  What a person can live with and without.  What sort of heartbreak one can live with.

 I hear the world calling out to me and I can't help but want to answer, not with words, but with my life.