Education Of a Wandering Man (1990) (28 page)

BOOK: Education Of a Wandering Man (1990)
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We were on the road within minutes, thus escaping the Battle of the Bulge.

For hours we had waited to gas up and return. The officer in charge of the gas dump was so fearful of saboteurs that he would not open even for us. (as the Germans had begun the strike that culminated in the Battle of the Bulge, they had dropped a number of four-man sabotage teams over the country, most of them equipped with American arms, jeeps, and such. I had captured two men of one such team near the big gas dump at Chartres, but they were in German uniforms.)

Supposedly these were hand-picked men, trained for their jobs, and the officer in command of the dump in Paris had been briefed. The difficulty was that in his case sabotage was not necessary; all the Germans had to do to put the dump out of action was scare him enough. Only at daylight did we finally succeed in convincing him it was safe.

It was bitterly cold that night and each of us made out as best we could, no fires being tolerated so close to the dump. Drivers huddled in the cabs of their trucks, and my driver and I did as well as we could in an enclosed jeep. My driver took over the back seat and, wrapped in his army overcoat, seemed to make out pretty well.

Every now and again I got out of the jeep and walked along my empty tank trucks, just checking. No Germans appeared and I was just as happy to be left alone. Most of the night I read Taras Bulba and wished for daylight and, hopefully, a warm sun.

When one takes the time to survey the efforts that have been made to preserve man's record on earth, the results are astonishing. Upon consideration, it becomes apparent that this need to leave some account of his presence here has been most important.

His great walls, his pyramids, and his temples are an important but minor aspect, for obviously the most important has been the written word. Man has endeavored by every means possible to explain his being here, where he hopes to go, and how he plans to go about it.

Is this explanation only for himself and his peers? Or does he hope to explain to future generations what he has been, thought, and wondered?

At a quick glance we might accept the idea that men write to themselves, that they ask their questions and pose their replies for others of their kind. But is that all?

It seems to me that every written word is an effort to understand man's place in the universe.

What is he? What is he becoming?

Will he populate the infinite number of planets that lie out there waiting? Or has that been done already by other forms of life?

We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.

What has been offered here is one man's quest for knowledge, in which he is much less impressed by what he has done than by what has not been done. Along the way I have written some stories--stories for people I have known about people I have known. These stories contain moments of drama because their intent is to entertain, but woven into their lines is much about how men have lived, fought, and survived. The world in which I have lived has often been a harsh, bitter one, but it has always been tinged with romance. I doubt I could have endured the one without the other.

In Sinkiang and the Pamirs, the Taklamakan and some parts of Tibet, when one party meets another on the way, the greeting is often "May there be a road!" It is a land of frequent snowslides, rockslides, and cave-ins. Roads are casually made; bridges are usually hanging from ropes, so the saying is apropos: One hopes the way will be clear, the road open. So as one pilgrim to another, I leave you with that wish: "May there be a road!"

Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made Something more equal to the centuries Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.

The mountains are dead stone, the people Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness, The mountains are not softened nor troubled And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.

--Robinson Jeffers from "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours"

BOOK: Education Of a Wandering Man (1990)
5.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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