Wanderer

The wanderer is not lost, but on the contrary, has a much clearer idea of where he is and where he is going then the rest of us. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I feel so drawn to wander. To simply walk in the unknown, "to sail away to half discovered places. To see the secrets so few eyes have seen. To see moments of enchantment on our faces. The moments when we smile and those in between." I want to live without a plan, without a map, I want to see, I want to be taught, and I want to teach. When I hear the word wanderer one of the things I think of is Taran, Taran Wanderer. To travel as he traveled, to simply learn what people have to teach me. To learn trade after trade after trade, to work the land, to have "a garden to walk in and immensity to dream in - what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars." I have thought about Taran Wanderer, and as I do, I know that I could not do as he did. This world is too different. But as I think of Taran, another figure comes to my mind, the figure of St. Francis. "He was obedient but not dependent. And he was as free as the wind, he was almost widely free, in his relation to the world around him." Here is a man who lived his entire life as a wanderer, yet was perfectly content to live his life in the same place every day. "He succeeded in obtaining an interview with the Sultan; and it was at that interview that he evidently offered, and as some say proceeded, to fling himself into the fire as a divine ordeal, defying the Muslim religious teachers to do the same. It is quite certain that he would have done so at a moment's notice. Indeed throwing himself into the fire was hardly more desperate, in any case, that throwing himself among the weapons and tools of torture of a horde of fanatical Mohammedans and asking them to renounce Mohamed." St. Francis shows how a man can live freely, and that is what a wanderer means to me, no matter where he is living or what he is doing. It can truly be said, " not all who wander are lost."