“Not all those who wander are lost.” –J. R. R. Tolkien.

I have friends who are currently wandering in the Champagne region of France, and unless they’ve been oversampling the local product, they are far from lost.

But wait…

The legend in Champagne is that the blind monk Dom Perignon exclaimed upon his first sip of the local sparkling product; “I am drinking stars!” Perhaps my friends are currently lost in the stars. I hope so.

They have wandered for as long as I’ve known them. Sometimes Janie and I have wandered with them. We’ve been to Chicago, Charleston, San Miguel de Allende, and Ocracoke (home of the murkiest clam chowder at which I’ve ever looked………looked, mind you). Over the years, as my “fixed foot” (thank you for that description David Dick) increasingly dominated my own wanderlust, the opposite seems to have taken hold of my roaming friends. They want to go. They want to see. They want street corn.

Street corn…

I understand champagne, Rodin, Montmartre…

I sorta understand buttes, Musso & Frank’s, the Cowboy Museum (how many times?)…

But this desire for street corn?

It plumb evades me.

But whatever geological, gastronomical, or artistic tugs they follow, they are never lost.

They may start each day with a vague notion of where exactly they’re going, but I’ve never known them to be lost. They wander in search of wonder.

I admire them.

I don’t wish to be them.

I travelled a goodly amount the last five years I worked for a living.

If you scramble the letters in the words; “business travel,” it spells “anathema.”

For me;

Alaska was cabbing to meet with delightful, hopeful, caring people working to improve neighborhoods full of homeless, compromised…hopeless people, who at each long night’s borning retreated to wilderness improvised camps to survive. Montana was landing at an airport where my fellow passengers knew the airport personnel by name…I didn’t…but the alcove in the hotel with three slot machines was cute. Tampa was a casino hotel. Boston was snowy, then snowy, then snowy once more. Washington was useless…three times. Biloxi was a hotel casino in the midst of concrete slabs whose houses had been leveled by the last hurricane de jour. Alighting on broken landing gear after dark in the midst of sirens and flashing lights in Chicago. Landing at a sub 10-degree 2am Bluegrass Field because the pilot wasn’t comfortable with his equipment and returned to Atlanta for a different plane.

No champagne…

No street corn even.

No wonder.

I remember an afternoon in 1972. I was landing at Bluegrass Field after a trip to Chicago for an audition for a summer acting job. It was stunning. Keeneland Racetrack was running. Everything was an impossible palette of shades of green. The white fences of Calumet Farm were stark and invigorating. I precisely remember thinking; “What the hell am I doing? THIS is where I want to be.”

I think that day I began to work towards a goal; to build a sustainable life Lexington.

Working towards that goal actually led me to forget that goal. It took that three years of “business travel” to remind me of what and where I wanted to be.

I’m here now.

My fixed foot is firmly and happily planted.

I have not left a search for wonder behind.

When I battle trumpet vine for sovereignty in our back yard, I revere the tenacity and enthusiasm of my foe. It is wondrous.

When a new, roaming frog in the family way leaves a slimy fertile contribution to our tiny lagoon. I find wonder, and start accumulating names for all the anticipated tadpoles.

When I sit on the back deck of my friends in Nonesuch and find myself sunami-ed in wonder by the Milky Way and the lightnin’ bugs.

When I drive on the Old Frankfort Road and admire the wonder of the paddocks speckled with field ornaments, aka thoroughbred horses.

Stone fences.

Gratz Park.

Breakfast at Josie’s.

Every morning I awake knowing I don’t have to pack, and drive to the airport, and funnel through security, and wrestle with the overhead rack, retrieve luggage, hail a shuttle or taxi, check in to a hotel…

Instead, get a cuppa coffee, do the Wordle, drift in to the living room and join Janie and Chloe the Wonder Dog on the couch to read the morning paper………completely wondrous.

Pedestrian glories?

You are welcome to think so.

I don’t.

I wouldn’t object to some of that champagne though.