I can thank my father for my penchant for rugged independence. He relied on no one, if he could help it, and had a soul that was more comfortable away from the things of man, rather than near them. Though we didn’t have much money growing up, my dad always seemed to have enough change for gas, beer, soda, and sandwiches, and he would pile us into the truck and drive us out and away. Inevitably, we’d break down at the end of some dirt road somewhere, and inevitably he’d climb under the truck with a hammer and a beer and fix it.

I’m not kidding, either. On several occasions something was wrong with the truck -our big, die-hard GMC that had been known to drag the family to Kingdom Come for snapshots and picnics- and my dad would literally climb beneath the beast with a hammer and a beer and start banging away. A minute would pass with us kids looking at each other, and then he’d yell from below, “TURN IT OVER!” and the thing would roar to life, and we’d drive off.

I was the kid who, when we’d arrive at some distant edge of the continent, would go straight for the tide pools, with my head down, looking for life. One tide pool would lead me to another until the spray of an errant crashing wave would smack me on the back, and I’d look up to find myself a mile from the parking lot.

My dad was the same way with roads and highways. He would follow one after another until the concrete turned to asphalt, the asphalt turned to gravel, and the gravel, sand, and we couldn’t go any further. I remember being at the end of a long dirt road, down a dry canyon somewhere in Death Valley. We’d driven as far as we could go, and then my dad got out of the car, turned to us and said, “Wait here,” and then started hiking, disappearing around a bend, into a gorge. He returned a half hour later. “There’s a natural arch back in there. It’s a little too much of a hike for you guys. Not worth it.” And then we’d head off, back to the highway, and moving along.

He would go anywhere, it seemed, and camp. The cold didn’t bother him. The wind didn’t bother him. The heat didn’t bother him. It was as if he was on some inescapable quest to find something, and we were forced to follow orders and accompany him,

without ever knowing what we were looking for. At night, in the camper, he would lay out a map of California on the table, and examine it. I remember him bragging that he’d been to every city in California, and I would look down and randomly pick a city, and ask him if he’d been there, and he’d say, “Yes,” and tell me where it was. This impressed me.

But he rarely got out of the state. I don’t think he ever got much farther than Arizona, for some reason, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He had no longing for Europe or India or the South Pacific, as I did, but he knew the southwest better than anyone I’d ever met, and could handle the outdoors like some wayfaring, indigenous nomad. He was like John Wesley Powell -the one-armed, bearded Civil War hero who was the first white man to come upon the Grand Canyon, shooting the rapids of the Colorado in a wooden dinghy. My dad told me about him once, and I think he admired him.

I never saw fear or panic in my father’s eyes when we were deep in the desert, only a longing for the next view, and a curiosity for whatever was around the next bend. Over time, I seemed to have absorbed all this from him, and it was the kind of thing that sons are never grateful for until their fathers are long gone, far and away, hiking though that undiscovered country on their own. The Great Beyond.

And so it was with a casual nonchalance that I grabbed my leather jacket and hopped in my Honda Civic and drove to Tucson that day. There was nothing at home for me, and I was compelled to leave by the nature of the circumstances, the poignant unraveling of all I’d hoped for. 

In Tucson was my friend, Craig, whom I’d visited a few times over the past couple years. It was only 500 miles, and I didn’t need a map. I hopped on Interstate 10, drove for eight hours, and got off at University Boulevard and parked next to his dorm at the University of Arizona. We hung out for a few days, and I took it easy as he went to class. I mentioned to him that I was thinking I was going to keep driving east, and he said I was crazy, and that it all sounded kinda dumb. “Will that car even make it? Where are you going to stay? Do you even have any money?”

I had a Chevron card, for gas. I had an Automobile Club card, in case I needed a tow. I had a few hundred bucks in cash, a tool box, a sleeping bag, and a camera. I had friends at colleges all across the country, and was sure they would put me up for a night, or two. Why, I couldn’t think of anything else I needed -and AAA would give me whatever maps I desired. But Craig didn’t see the point in any of it. He had college, was degree-minded, a career after that -a simple plan. And I had no enviable argument, so I didn’t bring it up anymore. After a couple of days, I said goodbye and drove to the onramp for the 10. I didn’t even hesitate. I headed east into uncharted territories. Beyond Arizona.