"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
|