The Nomadic Alternative – Page 24

Feathered creatures that flutter from the margins of holy books,

the saints of Southern Italy who hovered among the gilded amorini of Baroque altars, the halcyon plumage of divine kings and Coleridge’s bird of good omen, the “Albatross” – “Through the Fog it came; as if it had been a Christian monk, we hailed it in God’s name.”

Like my tramp, the wanderer of every age has sensed his affinity with the migrant bird. Gazing at the migrations of storks over Greece that arch-wandervogel, Diogenes the Cynic, saw a reflection of his own urge to travel – northwards to escape the shrivelling heat of summer, south in winter in flight from the cold. Nature, he said, afforded him the example of the birds. Furthermore the wanderer imagines his legs propelled by some irresistible force.

His wayfaring becomes the active instrument of the Good Life, which harmonizes his body to the ebb and flow of the Universe, guiding him to a gradual acceptance of all events in life and the idea of death.

This raises a vital, yet probably unanswerable, question. To what extent does our strong desire to wander have an organic basis? Does the idea of the journey correspond to some inner motivation like that which propels the movement of migrant animals? What is the principle behind human mobility? Certainly our muscles demand activity. If the body rots, the mind rots. We dance or exercise away our frustrations. We dance away our frustrations, and the dance itself is but a journey in miniature.

Furthermore the electric rhythms of the brain respond vibrantly to changes of surroundings, particularly when the subject is absorbed in the workings of natural phenomena. But the monotony of prolonged settlement weaves patterns in the brain that engender fatigue, boredom and a sense of impotent failure. In confinement we remain in a state of passive anxiety, afflicted by untimely charges of adrenalin, fighting off obesity by the will to eat less. But do we share with migrating animals an interior travel guide of instructions for the road?