Jamie would have to be crazy to accept the terms and the sacrifices that the Road demands. So why does he do it?
As I write this first entry of what I hope will eventually become a massive, intricate, and downright fascinating travelogue, I’m looking out the window onto a veritable onslaught of Mother Nature’s icy fury. Floating around the streetlight in a mesmerizing dance of air currents, the snow now falls for one sole reason. Not to give me a day off school (for I’m thankfully through with late-night excitement over the possibility of impending snowdays); not to blanket the ground in a beautifully thick layer of sledding potential; not even to grant me the opportunity of making some quick dough shoveling neighbors’ driveways as the teenager in me so yearned for (for, thankfully, I now have more substantial ways of making money).
No, the snow now falls outside as a catalyst. It may sound a trifle twisted, but as I sit here in my firehouse, I watch the snow drift down to seal the streets in a slippery coating of ice. The danger then presented may lead my immediate future in any number of directions. Will it be a quiet night spent watching the snow, however beautiful, in anxious (but futile) excitement? Or will it be an unending parade of cars off the road, overturned, into the tree, or into each other? The intoxicating effect of roaring down the highway in a fire engine – lights flashing, sirens blaring, adrenalin pumping – creeps under your skin and refuses to let go. It must be experienced to be understood and is only surpassed by the experience of arriving at a working incident – an emotional high impossible to express in mere words.
You begin to see life a bit…differently once you join the fire service. What used to be pristine and calming soon becomes the gateway to action and excitement. What used to be scary and dangerous soon becomes thrilling and only a tick of the clock away. It is absolutely and without doubt the most rewarding and satisfying thing I’ve ever done and possibly one of the best things I’ve done with my life thus far. I wouldn’t give this up for all the world. Yet, ironically enough, that is exactly what I intend to do. Such is the power of the Road.
The lure of the Road has successfully usurped all other priorities in my life and is enticing me to take that all-important and proverbial first step out the door. The sacrifices that the Road asks us to make are huge. We’d have to be crazy to accept its terms:
- Leave all preconceived notions of success and achievement behind;
- Turn away from your friends and family for what seems an extraordinary act of self-indulgence;
- Walk away from moderate- to well- (if you’re lucky) paying employment in favor of a temporary nomadic existence;
- Abandon all places, people, and things which provide comfort and sanity;
- Drown yourself completely in the unknown; and…
- Do all of this voluntarily.
We’d have to be crazy to accept those terms. Yet so many of us do just that, with a vigor that is almost frightening in some. Why do we do it? Each of us has our own unique reasons, and each is equally valid and strong. We go because the Road calls to us; we go because we want to see what’s out there; we go because we grow restless and irritable in stasis; we go because we think we may die if we don’t.
I go for all these reasons and more. It makes no sense to try and explain why I go – your motivation serves as my explanation. I leave great things behind that will most definitely be missed: the greatest group of friends I’ve ever known, involvement in an activity (the fire service) that has filled a void in my life I never knew existed, and my girlfriend – the one truly great love of my life.
I leave these things behind solid in the knowledge that they will all remain, yet I do not delude myself into thinking they will remain unchanged. I leave them behind because that crazy little voice inside my head constantly tells me not to be content with life and that change only comes through action. The Road is pulling, straining and screaming at me to get moving again. Who am I to argue?