All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost.
― J. R. R. Tolkien
There is much glittering and wandering that has no tangible presence, that is largely unseen by most. Sharon Olds and her mother know this as well as Tolkien:
Wonder as Wander
At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out,
my mother potters around her house.
Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one
there, no one to tell what to do,
she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself,
fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly
throws out her arms and screams—high notes
lying here and there on the carpets
like bodies touched by a downed wire,
she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through
the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she.
I feel, now, that I do not know her,
and for all my staring, I have not seen her
—like the song she sang, when we were small,
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die,
for poor lonely people, like you, and like I
—on the slow evenings alone, when she delays
and delays her supper, walking the familiar
halls past the mirrors and night windows,
I wonder if my mother is tasting a life
beyond this life—not heaven, her late
beloved is absent, her father absent,
and her staff is absent, maybe this is earth
alone, as she had not experienced it,
as if she is one of the poor lonely people,
as if she is born to die. I hold fast
to the thought of her, wandering in her house,
a luna moth in a chambered cage.
Fifty years ago, I’d squat in her
garden, with her Red Queens, and try
to sense the flyways of the fairies as they kept
the pollen flowing on its local paths,
and our breaths on their course of puffs—they kept
our eyes wide with seeing what we
could see, and not seeing what we could not see.
Oh the wandering and the blessed glittering that takes place in private places and moments, when there is no one there, no one to tell what to do. In these moments, we might taste a life beyond this life–perhaps earth alone. In these moments, perhaps we are not lost but found as we wander the crooks and crannies of souls imagined in new places, surrounded by new people and possibilities. Just as we have lived vicariously through others–fictional and real characters who dare to do and to be what we are not, what we have not–we live through wandering.
In the Sanctuary of Wandering, there are starts and re-starts, there are do-overs till the cows come home. If you can wonder as you wander, there are infinite possibilities of lives to live and places to go. Others may look into your situation and see a luna moth in a chambered cage, but you are marco-poloing your way through another adventure from the confines of your own sitting room or porch. Your virtual reality is one you create daily in your wanderings. Neither electricity nor technology is needed.
As a fellow wanderer, Plato writes:
I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.
Small bright pebbles to content ourselves with are enough in the Sanctuary of Wandering. And if one will have but eyes to see, there are, indeed, bright pebbles to be found. For one who wanders is not bound by time or space, by responsibilities or expectations, by physical abilities or disabilities. If you can imagine it, the corridors will be well-lit and the doors unlocked. Treasure awaits with each turn of the knob.
When the circumstances of this world darken and threaten to suffocate us, we often need to wander to survive. I recall reading a memoir of a Vietnam veteran who was held as a prisoner of war for years. He recounted that he played 18 holes of golf on the world’s finest courses daily. His mental wanderings down well-kept fairways and on manicured greens literally kept him alive. His mind buoyed his failing body, and hole by hole, he drove, chipped, putted, and wandered himself into one more day of living.
In Wandering: Notes and Sketches, a collection of poetry, prose, and artwork, Herman Hesse reveals his longing for a new life closer to nature. He, too, understands the necessity of both physical and soulful wandering:
I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms, I want to dream myself into priests and wanderers, female cooks and murderers, children and animals, and, more than anything else, birds and trees; that is necessary, I want it, I need it so I can go on living, and if sometime I were to lose these possibilities and be caught in so-called reality, then I would rather die.
Like Hesse, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms. I also need this to go on living.
Oh, there are times when I curse the many stops and starts of my mind. As a writer and a wanderer, I am all too eager to say no, that is not it at all and begin again. I dismay at my attention-deficit-disordered wandering that, untethered as a kite loosed from one’s hand, moves at the command of the wind. And try as I might, I often find that the string is just beyond my reach. The kite of my soul flashes its colorful tail as it heads east, or west, leaving my trembling fingers empty.
Still, I want my soul to be a wandering thing. Even if my hands are occasionally empty, there will be another kite and another day. That’s the true gift of wandering: the promise of another life, another place, another day.
And if you can’t see a destination? In the Sanctuary of Wandering, you can simply embark. Author D. H. Lawrence argues that the place to get to may be nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere. [Women in Love]
I can live with that, for my own nowhere is often a necessary respite from the world’s somewheres. As my grandchildren and I walk the 50 yards from my house to theirs, wandering soulfully into ocean and jungle adventures, living the pioneer lives of those we can imagine and those we have yet to imagine, none of us can imagine anything better. There will be toys to pick up and baths to be taken, but in these moments, we float above the day’s doings. We are more than content to wander.
Eat your heart out, Marco Polo.
