Due to the pandemic, I called off a trip to see my mother. Being in a high-risk category, she is, as she puts it, under “house arrest.” The cabin fever that immediately set in surprised me. When I am not traveling, I work from home. Life seems diametrically opposed to my spending time writing.
It was more or less a relief to go into quarantine. I could forget about attending meetings (at least until my groups figured out to hold them online). Groceries appear on my doorstep. There are no last-minute runs to the grocery store. Gifts arrive and depart by email. Doctor visits happen online.
All of this is an introverted author’s dream. The reason for it isn’t. It’s impossible not to grieve the tremendous loss of life. The annoyance at being confined to home dwindles by comparison.
It is nonetheless valid.
I enjoy hearth and home, but the adventures that await beyond its boundaries beckon me. I find myself dreaming out the window more these days. I’m thankful for the ever-changing view that includes mountains, evergreen-shrouded hillsides, a barn, woods, and a mown lawn. The birds fly about, and I envy them their freedom. Do you feel the same way?
Robert Service explained wanderlust this way:
“There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t sit still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest; Their’s is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.”
Fiction offers a safe form of escape, an outlet for the gypsy in all of us. As an author, I can travel into the storyworld of a book I’m writing. I’m now traveling through time into the Wild West while writing the fifth book in the Montana Gold series. I’m finding the chance to escape in other ways too.
Years ago, I set images from my travels to music. I was surprised recently to discover that thousands of people have watched the Grand Canyon virtual travel tour. I’ve decided to use images I shot during other trips to make more of these videos. It will be a month or two before I start. If you’d like to know when I post them, be sure to subscribe to the Janalyn Voigt Youtube channel and click the notification bell. Here’s the video I mentioned.
