"Wanderlust"

"Our paths long ago diverged. But two decades on, the most recurrent features of my love life remain airplanes and letters. I've met people who can't separate love and lust; for me the tricky distinction is between love and wanderlust. They're both about wanting and seeking and hoping to be swept away, so lost in the moment that the rest of the world recedes from view.

Some people spend their lives looking for anchors. For years, I cut ties as fast as I formed them, always struggling to be free...

'Wanderlust,' the irresistible impulse to travel, is a perfect word, adopted untouched from the German, presumably because it couldn't be improved. Workarounds like the French 'passion du voyage' don't quite capture the same meaning. Wanderlust is not a passion for travel exactly, it's something more animal and more fickle - more like lust. We don't lust after very many things in life. We don't need words like 'worklust' or 'homemakinglust.' But travel? The essayist Anatole Boyard put it perfectly: 'Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live... in our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.' "

 - From "Wanderlust" by Elisabeth Eaves in The Best Women's Travel Writing 2010, given to me by my Father Dearest and which has been my main road trip reading.