Salamander
Fire Walking

I met a woman in vet school who has become a good friend. She was the member of our class that kept me from being the oldest person in our class (I was 41 when we graduated, she was 42). During the stress of exams (in other words, all the time) we used to half-joke about running away and leaving it all behind. We even developed an elaborate plan involving taking the trans-Canadian highway from the Atlantic to the westernmost point of Canada, and then continuing across Alaska until we could pick up a ferry at the Aleuts. We'd just keep going west until we ran out of transportation. I'll have to devote an entry to my friend some day. She's got 19 cats because they needed homes and she couldn't find anyone else to take them.

I wonder how common a daydream that is. I find myself falling back into those kinds of daydreams more and more frequently these days. The difference is that now there is nothing to stop me from doing it but nerve (or lack thereof). I've a little savings, plus my share of my mother's estate. I alternate between tolerance and loathing when it comes to my job. With my mother dead and my marriage dissolved, there is nothing to hold me to this geographic anchor. I could literally go anywhere I wanted, start again.

I have lived within a five mile radius of where I was born all my life. I even commuted to college and veterinary school. The first time I ever spent more than a week away from home was vet school when I did a summer internship about three hundred miles from here. But now, I really could just up and leave.

The concept is simultaneously liberating and terrifying.