Dharma Bums: Jack Kerouac Wanderlust at Its Best

I have always had wanderlust. The road calls me, unseen destinations call me, I'm like my father in that respect. Men in our family hear the wind, the ocean, the call of adventure. Our ancestors were the same way--our ancestor, Ralph Dayton, was in the United States 15 years before the Pilgrims.

So when Lee, a great buddy of mine who wrote poetry, train jumped, and lived and loved with passion, gave me a copy of Dharma Bums when I was a junior. Sadly, I never had time to read the book.

Several years later I ran across it while packing for a road trip to New England. Why? Because it was there, I had a bad experience in grad school that caused me to drop out, and it was time for a change. A buddy went with me, and we road tripped for Vermont while I read Dharma Bums on the road.

The pure energy with which Kerouac writes is incredible. In my mind it was like I could see Kerouac hunched over, scribbling furiously while the parties of the sixties went on around him, sweat dripping on the pages. I have never read a writer who could put down so much energy, who could awake your inner traveler with a furious yearning for the road, for adventure, for one of those once in a life time experiences. For life itself. In fact, this is on my list of 10 books that changed my life.

I loved this book so much that I bought a copy of On the Road in a book store we visited in Rutland, Vermont, and read it by camp fire light during camping nights in the Appalachians. We visited Vermont, Pennsylvania, avoided New York, also enjoyed New Hampshire and a weekend in Maine.

We ended up back, not being able to find work to stay in the area, but the trip was one in a life time, and the intensity of his writing stuck affected me, stuck with me, was an inherent part of that road trip, whether it was shivering on an incredibly cold September night in Indiana, the smell of the ocean (not necessarily pleasant--which made it a great surprise!) off the Maine coast,the amazing ravine in New Hampshire...so much there.

These books are dangerous to someone like me, because my wanderlust is hard enough to control, and these books set me on fire for another adventure.