Introduction

 

Vagabond.  Wanderlust.  Transient.  Traveler.  Expatriate.  So many terms to describe us, yet we are so much more than a single word can convey.  A Tumbleweed may be someone who grew up moving around, or an adult that fell into the lifestyle.  Whatever the background, a Tumbleweed heeds the call of the road, and tends to go whichever way the wind blows. 

  

Calamity's Comments

"I'm a vagabond by birth and nature.  Seems I'm never satisfied ‘less I've got a good book in one hand and a suitcase in the other.  I figure when a body takes to moving, it's a lot like a tumbleweed in a gust of wind.  As much as it tries, it never plants roots anywhere.  I, myself, am a tumbleweed.  Least, that's what folks took to calling me.  They used to say that I had the worst case of wanderlust they'd ever seen.  Said that if the doctor hadn't wrapped me up tight in that blanket when I was born, I'da crawled right out the door."
                                     "Calamity" Jane Wilson (1993)
 

We are all around.  Everywhere you look.  In every town, state and country, in every nook and cranny of the world.  And yet, very few know we even exist.  I am talking of tumbleweeds--and you don't have to live in the West to be one.  We come from every kind of background you can imagine, and we drift in and out of people's lives with the wind.

My own wandering life came forth from a childhood spent in a military family.  Every two years I'd pack up my wordly belongings and set out for the next temporary world I would attempt to build for myself.  Friends are hard to come by when you're on the trail, and the ones you do make become trail markers--standing like boulders in a vast desert of memory.  It is hard to hang on to a friendship when you know tomorrow you'll have to give it up.  To lessen the pain, you just have to let go, move on, and not look back.  So I lived and I moved and it was the only life I knew.  Such is the life of a tumbleweed.

I love to learn, and the road beckons.  The yearning to see the world and try something new permeates my heart and soul, and I wonder if I will ever be content to be something more than "just passing through."  I've heard it said that every cowboy finds a home somewhere.  Wonder if that holds true for tumbleweeds, too?

We don't have an official organization or a secret handshake to identify us. We have nothing but the knowledge that there are others out there like us.  For this reason, I have set up my own little crossroads where us drifters can pass by and know that we are not alone.

This page is dedicated to all the tumbleweeds out there.  Merrily we roll along...
 
Yol Bolsun!

H. Jane "Calamity" Harrington

 

   

Page designed and maintained by H. Jane Harrington
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© 2002.