the dharma blog

I’m getting ready for a big road trip. Leaving Friday. I’m nervous. A lot of it feels wrong right now. I’ve learned that there always comes a point when all the signs leading up to a journey seem to say “warning! warning!” and you have to ride that out. There’s no reasoning with it.

When I conceived the idea of this trip a month ago, there were more signs than I could count that said this was the right trip at the right time. Those signs seem distant and irrelevant now.

I’m going west with a good friend. We’re going to fish. Fish and drive and camp. It should be incredible, the trip of memories. We’ll be fishing for wild trout in some of the finest rivers for doing so on Earth, everywhere we look we’ll see big mountains. We’ll drink some bourbon and smoke some Backwoods cigars and eat steaks when we feel like it and Dinty Moore out of the can when we feel like it. Large, healthy trout will hopefully come to hand.

But yet, right now, everything feels wrong. I wish it didn’t. I wish it didn’t seem like there were too many things to do, too many decisions to make, too many forces pulling at me. Wish it didn’t feel like it’s folly to take my 100,000+ mile car on such a trip, dangerous to be gone from work this particular week, irresponsible to spend this much money, arrogant to burn that much gasoline, immature to do all the things we’re going to do. And it simply feels wrong to be gone from my lovely loving wife for nine days.

I have a response to each of those fears, and all the others, but I won’t waste my time with them now. They don’t do any good. It’s emotion vs. logic and emotion always wins.

When I came up with the plan, I thought I would find trout in beautiful places. Now, I don’t know what I will find. What I will go looking for is adventure.

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen out there. And then we film it, that’s the whole concept.” – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou